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HISTOEICAL SKETCHES, 

&c. &c. 



PRINTED BY 
L. AND G. SEELEY, THAMES DITTON. 



HISTORICAL SKETCHES, 

SPEECHES, 

AND CHARACTERS. 



BY THE REV. GEORGE CROLY, L.L.D. 

RECTOR OF ST. STEPHENS', WALBROOK, LONDON. 



/ 



PUBLISHED BY R. B. SEELEY AND W. BURNSIDE 
AND SOLD BY L. AND G. SEELEY, 
FLEET STREET, LONDON. 
MDCCCXLII. C 



M*7 



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PREFACE. 



The papers contained in this volume were published 
in various periodical works during successive years, 
and now re-appear only at the suggestion of their 
publishers, who consider that they may be of some 
service to the cause of Church and State, for 
which they were written. They were Conservative 
before the name of Conservative was known ; 
and were employed to point out the perils of 
the Church, when those perils were only shaping 
themselves into form. In the State, they regarded 
as the one consummate danger — Democracy ; and 
in the Church, as the essential object of all vigilance — 
the power of Rome. It is altogether the reverse of a 
gratification to the writer, that those conjectures have 
since advanced, year by year, more towards certainty. 
But nothing can be clearer, than that a new and dis- 
turbing element has mingled with the Constitution ; 
or, that if a statesman of the last century could stand 



VI PREFACE. 

again among us, he would be not more ignorant of the 
political personages of our day, than he would be as- 
tonished and alarmed at that vast and gloomy ga- 
thering of popular force, which, in its hour of fury, 
must inevitably sweep away the State ; and which, 
even in its present hour of suspense, chills and over- 
shadows every prospect of the empire. 

The characteristic of our era is an extravagant con- 
ception of its own wisdom, and as extravagant a scorn 
for the wisdom of the past ; a passion for novelty, made 
still more hazardous by a contempt for experience. 
This we have learned from France. Her ' Three 
Days of July' spread their impulse, circle on circle, 
widening through Europe. England, as the nearest, 
felt it first and strongest, and it cost her a new 
modelling of her Constitution. 

A Cabinet, since called to power not less by the 
public necessity, than by the public confidence, has 
relieved us from the immediate dread of ruinous and 
irreparable change; but the principle of peril remains : 
armed associations have shown what ready instruments 
can be found by conspiracy ; Republican theories, 
openly avowed, have shown into what frenzy specu- 
lation can inflame itself. The mechanical discoveries 
which distinguish our time, seem to have lent their 
spirit to the popular feelings ; all is to be sacrificed 



PREFACE. vn 

to force and velocity ; irresistible strength and irre- 
sistible speed in whirling the Masses along, are the 
grand objects ; while it is willingly forgotten how 
much the rapidity increases the danger, and how 
slight an accident may turn the flying machine into 
the means of comprehensive and remediless ruin. 

The prospects of the Church unquestionably are of 
a more cheering order. She has displayed an energy 
and activity wholly unexpected by her assailants. Her 
Diocesan Schools — her rapid erection of churches 
in the newly -peopled districts of the land — and, above 
all, her establishment of Colonial Bishoprics, incontes- 
tibly the noblest and most comprehensive of her 
measures, an illustrious enterprize — of all her acts 
since the Reformation, the most sacredly exhibiting 
the energies of the Apostolic Age — have formed for 
the Church a strength in England, and in Europe, 
which, to survive all change, has only to be seconded 
by the Nation. 

The existence of the Establishment is essential to 
the Constitution ; for it contains exactly that degree 
of freedom, with exactly that degree of subordina- 
tion, which educate a people for limited mon- 
archy. 

By the fixed nature of her property, the Church 
gives the nation security for her conduct, and gives it, 



Mil PREFACE. 

besides, the important example of a clergy, neither 
slaves to the populace, nor slaves to the government. 

By the publicity of her Articles, she at once pre- 
vents all misconception of her principles, and prohi- 
bits all corruption of her doctrine. 

By her Orders, she makes character and education 
necessary to her priesthood. 

By her Prelacy, she secures conscientious and manly 
subordination in her clergy ; which, in its turn, is the 
safest pledge for loyalty, morality, and unity among 
her people. But her influence extends even beyond 
her own borders : and, while the Church stands, her 
example compels Schism to be comparatively learned 
and decorous, and Superstition to be comparatively 
tolerant and pure. 

Her chief antagonists are Popery and Sectarianism, 
though there is no equality between those perils. The 
vigorous and active occupations of the English mind 
are hostile to the mystical and solitary temperament 
in which sects in all ages have found their natural 
origin. Schism is seldom long-lived. A hundred 
sects have risen and perished in Europe, since the 
Reformation. They are shaped too much on the 
fantasy of their founder, to survive him long; they 
linger for a while over his grave, and then follow him 
to oblivion — earth to earth. 



PREFACE. IX 

Strong only where the Church is weak, they dis- 
appear before her ascending vigour, like vapours 
rising in the dusk and chill, but no sooner touched 
by the sun, than they evaporate by the course of 
nature. The Church in our day needs waste but 
little anxiety upon them. Her true hazard is from an 
enemy of another nature. Sectarianism startles the 
mind by its arrogance, or its sternness. But Popery 
has attractions for every failing of man : it assimilates 
with every strength of the passions, and every weak- 
ness of the understanding ; and it assimilates in silence, 
conquers noiselessly, and melts into the mind. What 
are the perils of the casual blasts, that echo round 
the battlements of the Church in her hour of slum- 
ber, but are unheard and forgotten, as soon as her 
dwellers awake and bestir themselves in the business 
of the day ; compared with the moral malaria, that 
creeps over the surface, without disfiguring the soil ; 
glides through gate and loophole, unfelt and unseen ; 
fills her chambers with gradual decay, and leaving the 
whole noble edifice uninjured to the eye, yet leaves 
it tenantless for ever ! 

But the chief question is, the remedy. It is among 
the first duties of the Christian, to think as kindly of 
all men as he can, and to avoid all language that can 
irritate personal feeling. And the more that he pur- 



X PREFACE. 

sues this conduct, the more he is doing the will of that 
Supreme Beneficence, which desires, that " all shall 
come to the knowledge of the truth." *' The servant 
of God must not strive," is an inspired command. 

In this conviction, the writer of these pages, if he 
possessed sufficient authority to make his advice 
available, would say — that, admitting the zeal and 
ability which have been displayed in the public con- 
troversies, it may be doubted whether a simpler mode 
may not be more effectual. Religious fallacy is 
so wide a field, that the antagonists may pursue 
each other endlessly ; the popular triumph ends 
only in personal resentment ; there is no power to 
converge the combatants to the truth. 

Luther, one of the most powerful controversial- 
ists in the presence of an assembly, that the world 
has ever known, seems never to have converted any 
of the champions whom he so constantly defeated. 
The providential solitude which gave him time for 
the translation of the Scriptures, was the true season 
of his triumphs; as the publication of the Bible was 
the true trumpet before which the ancient and armed 
bulwarks of error fell, without the touch of man. 

The first teachers of the Reformation had chiefly 
begun, by inveighing against the practices of Rome ; 
but they found that this produced only political 



PREFACE. XI 

tumult and personal hostility. They abandoned 
invective ; simply preached the facts and doctrines 
of Scripture ; and the people followed the Reformer. 
Bedell tells us, that when in Ireland the Reformers 
preached the Scripture alone, the people listened ; 
but when they preached against the Mass, " there was 
bloodshed." But we have a still higher authority, 
that of the apostles. St. Peter and St. Paul could 
not have passed through the Greek or Roman 
cities, without being startled at the practices of the 
national worship. Yet we scarcely find the mention 
of them in their epistles. St. Paul writes from Ephe- 
sus, the head-quarters of Asiatic idolatry ; from Co- 
rinth, the supreme seat of Greek licentiousness ; 
from Rome, where the air was thick with the fumes 
of every strange worship of the earth, mingled with 
gladiatorial blood ; yet, except in an occasional warn- 
ing to the disciples, we can scarcely discover that he 
lived in the midst of the most overwhelming system 
of religious impurity ever witnessed by man. We 
certainly find no direct declamation against the 
heathen altar, no bold exposure of the heathen 
theatre (then all impurity) no lofty denouncement 
of the still more debasing superstitions, the magic, 
and the divination, which corrupted and darkened 
the latter periods of the whole gentile mind. He 



Xll PREFACE. 

more effectually assails practice by inculcating prin- 
ciple ; instead of casting down the altar by force, he 
beams upon it that sacred light which extinguishes 
its fires. 

An enthusiast would have blown the signal for 
the assault, and with the same sound would have 
stirred the defenders to sharpen their swords, and rush 
to the field. But, he " preached righteousness, tem- 
perance, and judgment to come," and heathenism 
" trembled." Its tyranny passed away, and Christian- 
ity ascended the universal throne. How much stronger 
is the case, when the question is between Christians, 
and the purpose is conversion. One of the most 
cheering promises of our ultimate triumph is to be 
found in the greater use which 5 year by year, is made 
of the Scriptures in the preaching of the Protestant 
clergy. The facts, as well as the doctrines, of Scrip- 
ture, cannot be stated too clearly, and too constantly, 
to the people. The principles, the habits, and the 
hopes of the original leaders of Christianity, cannot 
be too distinctly made the habitual knowledge of the 
people, This is, 

" The sword 
Of Michael, from the armoury of God, 
And given him, tempered so, that neither keen 
Nor solid can resist that edge :" — 

the only weapon that will not break, and that 



PREFACE. xi 11 

cannot be wrested from our hands. With this 
knowledge familiar to the mind, the sophistries of 
Schism or Superstition will intuitively appear un- 
natural and frivolous error ; they will be repulsed as 
the mist is from polished steel, and instead of being 
received as matter of disquisition, will be shrunk 
from as matter of astonishment. But the gentleness 
of the Gospel must accompany its power. 

Let the truth be preached, yet with all avoidance of 
offence; let all personal exacerbation be shunned; 
let the preacher limit himself to the Gospel, and, 
avoiding the hasty provocation of prejudice, or the 
mixture of human passions with the doctrines of 
peace, leave the rest to the Great Disposer of the 
mind ; and Truth will prevail. 



CONTENTS, 



I. England the Fortress of Christianity - 1 

II. Politics and Projects of Russia - - 17 

III. Providence - Characters of Pitt, Burke, 

and Nelson 43 

IV. Memoir of Louis Philippe, King of the 

French ------ 53 

V. England and Europe, — Sketch of Can- 
ning -------75 

VI. The Church in Ireland 89 

VII. Speech, at the first anniversary of the 
City of London Conservative Associ- 
ation, in 1836 - - - - 108 

VIII. Speech, at the second Anniversary of 

the City of London Association, 1837 120 
IX. Memoir of Zuinglius, the Swiss Reformer 153 
X. Character of Curran, and the eloquence 

of Ireland ----- 204 

XI. Memoir of Luther - 225 

XII. Speech, at the City of London Conser- 
vative Meeting, 1840 - - - 310 
XIII. Character of Napoleon - 338 



I. 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 



Written in 1828. 
There is the strongest reason to believe, that as 
Judaea was chosen for the especial guardianship of 
the original Revelation ; so was England chosen for 
the especial guardianship of Christianity. 

The original Revelation declared the one true 
God; Paganism was its corruption, by substituting 
many false gods for the true. The second Revela- 
tion, Christianity, declared the one true Mediator; 
Popery was its corruption, by substituting many 
false mediators for the true. Both Paganism and 
Popery adopted the same visible sign of corruption, 
the worship of images ! 

The Jewish history reveals to us the conduct of 
Providence with a people appointed to the express 



% ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

preservation of the faith of God. There every 
attempt to receive the surrounding idolatries into a 
participation of the honours of the true worship, even 
every idolatrous touch, was visited with punishment ; 
and that punishment not left to the remote working 
of the corruption, but immediate ; and, by its direct- 
ness, evidently designed to make the nation feel the 
high importance of the trust, and the final ruin that 
must follow its betrayal. 

A glance at the British history since the Reforma- 
tion, will show with what undeniable closeness this 
Providential system has been exemplified in England. 
Every reign which attempted to bring back Popery, or 
even to give it that share of power which could in any 
degree prejudice Protestantism, has been marked by 
signal calamity. It is a memorable circumstance, that 
every reign of this Popish tendency has been followed 
by one purely Protestant : and, as if to make the source 
of the national peril plain to all eyes, those alternate 
reigns have not offered a stronger contrast in their 
religious principles than in their public fortunes. 
Let the rank of England be what it might under the 
Protestant Sovereign, it always went down under the 
Popish. But let its loss of dignity, or of power, be 
what it might under the Popish Sovereign, it always 
recovered under the Protestant, and more than reco- 
vered ; was distinguished by sudden success, public 
renovation, and some remarkable increase of the 
freedom or honour of the empire. 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 3 

Protestantism was first thoroughly established in 
England in the reign of Elizabeth. 

Mary had left a dilapidated kingdom ; the nation 
worn out by disaster and debt ; the national arms 
disgraced ; nothing in vigour but Popery. Elizabeth, 
at twenty-five, found her first steps surrounded with 
the most extraordinary embarrassments ; at home, 
the whole strength of a party, including the chief 
names of the kingdom, hostile to her succession and 
religion: in Scotland, a rival title, supported by 
France ; in Ireland, a perpetual rebellion, inflamed 
by Rome ; on the Continent, the whole fury of Spain 
roused against her by the double stimulant of am- 
bition and bigotry, at a time when Spain commanded 
almost the whole strength of Europe. 

But the cause of Elizabeth was Protestantism : 
and in that sign she conquered. She shivered the 
Spanish sword ; she paralyzed the power of Rome ; 
she gave freedom to the Dutch ; she fought the 
battle of the French Protestants ; every eye of re- 
ligious suffering throughout Europe was fixed on this 
magnanimous woman. At home, she elevated the 
habits and the heart of her people. She even drained 
off the bitter waters of religious feud, and sowed in 
the vigorous soil, which they had so long made un- 
wholesome, the seed of every principle and institution 
that has since grown up into the strength of empire. 
But her great work was the establishment of Pro- 
testantism. Like the Jewish king, she found the ark 
b 2 



4 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of God without a shelter ; and she built for it the 
noblest temple in the world ; she consecrated her 
country into its temple. 

She died in the fulness of years and honour : the 
great Queen of Protestantism throughout the nations : 
in the memory of England her name and her reign 
alike immortal. 

James the First inherited the principles, with the 
crown, of Elizabeth. His first act was, to declare 
his allegiance to Protestantism. From that moment 
Popery lost all power against him. It tried faction, 
and failed. It then tried conspiracy, and more than 
failed. Its conspiracy gave birth to the most memo- 
rable instance of national preservation, perhaps, in 
the annals of Europe. The gunpowder plot would 
have swept away the King, the Royal Family, and the 
chief Nobles and Commoners of England, at a blow. 
The secret was kept for a year and a half. It was 
never betrayed, to the last. It was discovered by 
neither treachery, nor repentance, and but on the 
eve of execution. Yet its success must have l>een 
national ruin. A popish Government was to have 
been set up. The country, in its state of distrac- 
tion and destitution, must have lain exposed to the 
first invader. The consequences were incalculable. 
The hand of God alone saved the throne and altar 
of England. • - 

Charles the First ascended a prosperous throne ; 
England in peace, faction feeble or extinct ; the 



ENGLAND THE PORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 5 

nation animated by a new spirit of commerce and 
vigorous adventure. No reign of an English King 
ever opened a longer or more undisturbed view ol 
prosperity. But Charles betrayed the sacred trust 
of Protestantism. He formed a Popish alliance, 
with the inevitable knowledge that it established a 
Popish dynasty.* He lent himself to the intrigues of 
the French Minister, stained with Protestant blood ; 
for his first armament was a fleet against the Hugue- 
nots. If not a friend to Popery, he was madly regardless 
of its hazards to the Church and the Constitution. 

Ill-fortune suddenly gathered round him. Dis- 
tracted councils, popular feuds met by alternate 
weakness and violence, the loss of the national respect, 
finally deepening into civil bloodshed, were the 
punishments of his neglect of Protestantism. The 
late discovery of his error, and the solemn repentance 
of his prison hours, painfully redeemed his memory. 

Cromwell's was the sceptre of a broken kingdom. 
He found the fame and force of England crushed; 

* By the marriage compact with the Infanta, the Royal children were 
to be educated by their mother until they were ten years old. But France, 
determined on running no risk of their being Protestants, raised the term 
to thirteen years. Even this was not enough ; Popery was afraid of 
Protestant milk: and a clause was inserted that — the children should not 
be suckled by Protestant nurses ! The object of those stipulations was so 
apparent, that Charles must have looked to a Popish succession ; and the 
stipulations were so perfectly sufficient for their purpose, that all his sons, 
even to the last fragment of their line, were Roman Catholics. Even the 
King's Protestantism was doubtful. Olivarez, the Spanish Minister, 
openly declared that Charles, in treating for his marriage with the Infanta, 
had pledged himself to turn Roman Catholic, 



6 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

utter humiliation abroad ; at home, the exhaustion 
of the civil war ; new and arrogant faction, and old, 
intractable partizanship, tearing the public strength 
asunder. 

Cromwell was a murderer: yet, in the high de- 
signs of Providence, the personal purity of the instru- 
ment is not always regarded. The Jews were 
punished for their idolatry by idolators, and restored 
by idolators. But, whatever was in the heart of the 
Protector, the policy of his government was Pro- 
testantism. His treasures and his arms were openly 
devoted to the Protestant cause ; in France, in Italy, 
throughout the world. He was the first who raised 
a public fund for the relief of the Vaudois 
Churches. He sternly repelled the advances which 
Popery made to seduce him into the path of the 
late King. 

England was instantly lifted on her feet, as by 
miracle. All her battles were victories; France and 
Spain bowed before her. All her adventures were 
conquests; she laid the foundation of her colonial 
empire : and extended that still more illustrious com- 
mercial empire, to which the only limits in either 
space or time may be those of mankind. She rapidly 
became the most conspicuous power of Europe ; 
growing year by year in opulence, public knowledge, 
and foreign renown : until Cromwell could almost 
realize the splendid improbability, that, ' before he 
died, he would make the name of an Englishman as 



ENGLAND THE PORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 7 

much feared and honoured as ever was that of an 
ancient Roman.' 

Charles the Second ascended an eminently pros- 
perous throne. Abroad it held the foremost rank, 
the fruit of the vigour of the Protectorate. At home, 
all faction had been forgotten in the general joy of 
the Restoration. 

But Charles was a concealed Roman Catholic* 
He attempted to introduce his religion ; the star of 
England instantly darkened; the country and the 
king alike became the scorn of the foreign courts ; 
the royal honour was scandalized by mercenary sub- 
serviency to France ; the national arms were humi- 
liated by a disastrous war with Holland ; the capital 
was swept by the memorable inflictions of pestilence 
and conflagration ! 

James the Second still more openly violated the 
national trust. He publicly became a Roman Catho- 
lic. This filled the cup. The Stuarts were cast out, 
they and their dynasty for ever ; that proud line of 
kings was sentenced to wither down into a monk; and 
that monk living on the alms of England, a stipend- 
iary and an exile. 

William was called to the throne by Protestant- 
ism. He found it, as it was always found at the close 
of a popish reign, surrounded by a host of difficulties ; 
at home, the kingdom in a ferment ; Popery, and its 

* He had solemnly professed Popery on the eve of the Restoration. 



8 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ally Jacobitism, girding themselves for battle ; fierce 
disturbance in Scotland ; open war in Ireland, with 
the late king at its head ; abroad the French king 
domineering over Europe, and threatening invasion. 
In the scale of nations, England nothing ! 

But the principle of William's government was 
Protestantism ; he fought and legislated for it through 
life ; and it was to him, as it had been to all before 
him, strength and victory. He silenced English fac- 
tion ; he crushed the Irish war ; he next attacked the 
colossal strength of France on its own shore. This 
was the direct collision, not so much of the two king- 
doms, as of the two faiths ; the Protestant champion 
stood in the field against the Popish persecutor. 
Before that war closed, the fame of Louis was undone, 
and England rose to the highest military name. In 
a train of immortal victories, she defended Protest- 
antism throughout Europe, drove the enemy to his 
palace-gates, and, before she sheathed the sword, 
broke the power of France for a hundred years. 

The Brunswick line were called to the throne by 
Protestantism. Their faith was their title. They 
were honourable men, and they kept their oaths to 
the religion of England. The country rose under 
each of those Protestant kings to a still higher rank ; 
every trivial reverse compensated by some magnifi- 
cent addition of honour and power, until the throne 
of England stood on a height from which it looked 
down upon the world ! 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OP CHRISTIANITY. V 

Yet, in our immediate memory, there was one 
remarkable interruption of that progress ; which, if 
the most total contrast to the periods preceding and 
following can amount to proof, proves that every 
introduction of Popery into the Legislature will be 
visited as a national crime. 

During the war with the French Republic, England 
had gone on from triumph to triumph. The crimes 
of the popish continent had delivered it over to be 
scourged by France ; but the war of England was 
naval: and in 1805, she consummated that war by 
the greatest victory ever gained on the seas ; * at one 
blow she extinguished the navies of France and 
Spain! The death of her great Statesman at length 
opened the door to a new administration.! They 
were men of acknowledged ability, some, of the 
highest ; and all accustomed to public affairs. But 
they came in under a pledge to the introduction of 
popery, sooner or later, into the legislature. They 
were emphatically ' The Roman Catholic Adminis- 
tration.' 

There never was in the memory of man so sudden 
a change from triumph to disaster. Disgrace came upon 
them in every shape in which it could assail a govern- 
ment ; in war, finance, and negotiation. Jill their 
expeditions returned with shame. The British arms 
were tarnished in the four quarters of the globe. J 

* Trafalgar, Oct. 1805. f February, 1806. 

+ Thf retreat from Sweden, 1807.— Egypt invaded and evacuated, 1807. 



10 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANTITY. 

And, as if to make the shame more conspicuous, they 
were baffled even in that service, to which the national 
feeling was most keenly alive ; and in which defeat 
seemed impossible. England saw, with astonishment, 
her fleet disgraced before a barbarian without a ship 
on the waters, and finally hunted out of his seas by 
the fire from batteries crumbling under the discharge 
of their own cannon. Those disasters did not amount 
to National Calamity, but they were indicative. 
They showed, that the tide had turned. 

But the fair fame of the British empire was not to 
be thus cheaply wasted away. The ministry must 
perish ; already condemned by the voice of the 
country, it was now to be its own executioner. It at 
length made its promised attempt upon the constitu- 
tion. A harmless measure * was proposed ; noto- 
riously but a cover for the deeper insults that were 
to follow. It was met with manly repulse ; and, in 
the midst of public indignation, perished the popish 
ministry of one month and one year, f 

Its successors came in on the express title of resist- 

— Whitelock sent out to Buenos Ayres, 1807. — Duckworth's repulse at 
Constantinople, 1807. All those operations had originated in 1806, 
excepting Whitelock's, which was the final act of the ministry. 

* The granting of commissions in the army. Mr. Perceval opposed 
this, as only a pretext ; he said, ' It was not so much the individua 
measure, to which he objected, as the system of which it formed a part, 
and which was growing every day. From the arguments that he had 
heard, a man might be almost led to suppose, that one religion was con- 
sidered as good as another, and that the Reformation was only a measure 
of political convenience.' 

f March, 1807. 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 

ance to popery ; they were emphatically ' The Pro- 
testant Administration.' They had scarcely entered 
on office, when the whole scene of disaster brightened; 
and the deliverance of Europe was begun, with a 
vigour that never relaxed, a combination of unex- 
pected means and circumstances, an effective and 
rapid renown; of which, the very conjecture, but a 
month before, would have been laughed at as a dream. 
The scene, and the success, were equally extraordinary. 

Of all countries, Spain, sluggish, accustomed to the 
yoke of France, and with all its old energies melted 
away in the vices of its government, was the last to 
to which Europe could have looked for defiance of 
the universal conqueror. But, if ever the battle was 
fought by the shepherd's staff and sling against the 
armed giant, it was then. England was now palpably 
summoned to begin a new career of triumph. Irre- 
sistible on one element, she was now to be led step by 
step to the first place of glory on another ; and that 
Protestant ministry saw, what no human foresight 
could have hoped to see, Europe restored ; the mo- 
narch of her monarchs a prisoner in its hands ; and 
the mighty fabric of the French atheistic empire, so 
long darkening and distending, like an endless dun- 
geon, over the earth, suddenly scattered with all its 
malignant pomps and ministers of evil into air. 

It is impossible, to conceive that this regular inter- 
change of punishment and preservation can have been 
without a cause, and without a purpose. Through 



12 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

almost three hundred years, through all varieties of 
public circumstance, all changes of men, all shades 
of general polity, we see one thing alone unchanged — 
the regular connexion of national misfortune with 
the introduction of popish influence, and of national 
triumph with its exclusion. 

Those remarks were originally published on the 
eve of the year 1829. The Bill of that calamitous 
year replaced the Roman Catholic in the Parliament, 
from which he had been expelled a century before, 
by the united necessities of religion, freedom, and 
national safety. The whole experience of our Pro- 
testant history had pronounced that evil must fol- 
low. And it has followed. 

From that hour all has been clouded. British 
legislation has lost its stability. England has lost 
alike her pre-eminence abroad, and her confidence at 
home. Every great institution of the State has 
tottered. Her Governments have arisen, and passed 
away, like shadows. The Church in Ireland, bound 
hand and foot, has been flung into the furnace, and 
is disappearing from the eye. The Church in Eng- 
land is haughtily threatened with her share of the 
fiery trial. Every remonstrance of the nation is 
insolently answered by pointing to rebellion, ready 
to seize its arms in Ireland. Democracy is' openly 
proclaimed as a principle of the State, Popery is 
triumphantly predicted as the universal religion. To 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 

guide and embody all ; a new shape of power has 
started up in the Legislature ; — a new element at 
once of control and confusion ; a central faction, 
which has both sides at its mercy ; holding the 
country in contempt, while it fixes its heel on Cabi- 
nets trembling for existence ; possessing all the in- 
fluence of office without its responsibility ; and 
engrossing unlimited patronage for the purposes of 
unlimited domination. Yet these may be " but the 
beginning of sorrows." 

But, if England shall give way to Popery, she 
sins against the most solemn warnings of Scripture : 
We have the apostolic declaration, — " Let no man 
deceive you by any means ; for that day shall not come, 
except there come a falling away first, and that man of 
sin be revealed, the son of perdition ; — who opposeth 
and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or 
that is worshipped ; so that he, as God, sitteth in the 
temple of God, showing himself that he is God. * 
* * * And then, shall that Wicked one be 
revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the 
Spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the 
brightness of his coming : even him, whose coming is 
after the working of Satan, with all power, and 
signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness 
of unrighteousness in them that perish ; because 
they received not the love of the truth, that they 
might be saved." (2 Thess. ii.) This gives the por- 
traiture of the great deluder of the European world 



14 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in his external and imposing aspect. Another por- 
traiture displays his internal evil : — 

" Now, the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the 
latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving 
heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils. 
Speaking lies in hypocrisy ; having their conscience 
seared with a hot iron : forbidding to marry, and 
commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath 
created to be received with thanksgiving, of them 
which believe and know the truth." Ending with 
the solemn injunction to all teachers of Christianity, 
" If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these 
things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, 
nourished up in the words of faith and of good 
doctrine." (1 Tim. iv. I.) 

Finally, we have the denunciation of the prophet, 
declaring the Divine judgments : — 

" And I saw another angel come down from hea- 
ven, having great power ; and the earth was lightened 
with his glory. And he cried mightily, with a strong 
voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, 
and is become the habitation of devils ; the hold of 
every foul spirit. And I heard another voice from 
heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye 
be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not 
of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto 
heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities." 
(Rev. xviii.) 

This language is not used to give offence to the 



ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 

Roman Catholic. His religion is reprobated, because 
it is his undoing ; the veil that darkens his under- 
standing ; the tyranny that chains his natural liberty 
of choice; the fatal corruption of Christianity, that 
shuts the Scriptures upon him, forces him away from 
the worship of that Being, who is to be worshipped 
alone in spirit and in truth ; and prostrates him at 
the feet of priests and images of the Virgin, and the 
whole host of false and unscriptural mediatorship. 
But, for himself there can be but one feeling ; — a 
feeling of the deepest anxiety, that he should 
search the Scriptures ; and, coming to that search 
without insolent self-will, or sullen prejudice, or the 
haughty and negligent levity to which their wisdom 
will never be disclosed, he should compare the gospel 
of God with the doctrines of Rome. 

But, whatever may be the lot of those to whom 
error has been an inheritance, woe be to the man and 
the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, 
free above all other nations, sustained amidst the 
trials which have covered Europe before her eyes 
with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by the 
fullest knowledge of Divine truth, shall refuse fidelity 
to the compact by which those matchless privileges 
have been given, her condemnation will not linger. 
She has already made one step full of danger. She 
has committed the capital error, of mistaking that for 
a purely political question, which was a purely re- 
ligious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge 



16 ENGLAND THE FORTRESS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the precipice. It must be retracted, or her empire 
is but a name. In the clouds and darkness which 
seem to be deepening upon all human policy ; in the 
gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish dis- 
contents at home, it may even be difficult to discern 
where the power yet lives to erect the fallen majesty 
of the Constitution once more. But there are 
mighty means in sincerity. And, if no miracle was 
ever wrought for the faithless and despairing ; the 
country that will help itself — the generous, the 
high-hearted, and the pure, will never be left desti- 
tute of the help of heaven. 



II. 

POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 



Written in 1829. 
All the great convulsions of empire are moral thun- 
derstorms. They arise from the bosom of the soil, 
yet seem to come from sources beyond man ; they 
fall with fearful violence upon the chosen spot of 
devastation, but they clear the atmosphere for all 
the rest ; they gather gloomily and long, but once in 
motion, they move rapidly, and with irresistible 
force, until their work is done. 

When we shall have attained a more perfect 
knowledge of the ways of providence, we shall per- 
haps find that there are laws for these convulsions, 
as there are for the fires and roarings of the storm. 
They may even be periodical, though we have not 
yet discovered their cycle. But no nation, at once 
poor and virtuous, has ever undergone them. It is 
power in the state, and opulence in the people, per- 
verted into rapine in the one, and corruption in the 
other, which make them dangerous to the earth. The 
moral electricity accumulates, and must be dis- 



18 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

charged ; the elements are shaken, the bolt falls, 
and the balance is restored. 

The condition of the Ottoman empire has fixed 
the eyes of Europe for the last hundred years. It 
has frequently exhibited a feebleness which seemed 
the immediate signal of ruin, and it has sometimes 
developed a sudden strength which still more per- 
plexed all speculation. Yet the process of decay 
was regular. What were those sudden bursts, but 
the struggles of the tiger, biting the spear which he 
could not extract from his side. Mahmoud made 
bold efforts for the national restoration, but his 
vigour only hastened the catastrophe. Every step 
which he took to raise his country, but brought it 
nearer to the edge of that precipice on which it now 
hangs. If Mahmoud should live long, he will be the 
last of the sultans ; if he should die early, he will 
only transfer that disastrous distinction to his son. 
The independence of the Porte cannot survive the 
next quarter of a century. There may still be an 
Ottoman throne, for the jealousy of the great Euro- 
pean powers will not easily suffer it to be absorbed 
by any one of them ; but the throne will be that of 
a viceroy, the sovereignty will be only a vassalage, 
and even its existence will continue only until they 
grow weary of watching each other, or turn their 
mutual surveillance into a confederacy of general 
plunder. But in this contest there will be two powers, 
whose objects it will be impossible to reconcile. 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 19 

Russia, which is too near, too powerful, and too 
grasping, to relinquish the lion's share ; and England, 
which is too high-principled to take any part in 
spoil. Yet, whatever may be the struggle of Europe, 
that of Turkey is at an end. The fate of the Sultan 
is inevitable : he must go down ; the ruin of his 
empire is as palpable, as if it were written on his 
turban. 

The grand question with mankind now is, what 
result is to follow from this sudden and tremendous 
shock to the pacific system of Europe ? The ques- 
tion is vital to England in her domestic interests ; 
for, by bringing Russia into the rank of a great 
naval power, it brings her into direct contest with us 
as rulers of the seas ; and it is no less essential in her 
continental interests, for it ^threatens the overthrow 
of that system, whose protectorship has been the 
glory and the security of England. 

The facts of Turkish ruin are unanswerable. The 
sultan has found himself unable to resist the occupa- 
tion of his territory, up to the gates of his capital. 
He has saved that capital only by the entreaty of the 
foreign ambassadors. He has not been able to send 
out a single soldier, since the passage of the Balkan, 
to save his provinces from plunder. He has not been 
able to defend himself from even his own disbanded 
troops, and has been on the point of soliciting the aid 
of his enemy, to keep the peace of Constantinople ! 
He has not been able to make his soldiers take the 
c 2 



20 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

field, nor to restrain them from keeping it at their 
will, nor his pachas from scoffing at his surrender, and 
from warring on their own account. The retreat of 
the enemy has been as little influenced by the sultan j 
as their advance was impeded by his activity. And, it 
is to be remembered, that this extraordinary torpor 
cannot have proceeded from the personal character of 
Mahmoud. His previous career was eminent for 
that unexpected superiority to his age and country, 
which made him eager to adopt the inventions of 
European science and war. He was the most Euro- 
pean of all Turks ; vigorous, sagacious, and unpre- 
judiced ; Turkey had not seen such a sovereign for 
a hundred years. 

The true reasoning from those unquestionable 
facts, is, not that Mahmoud had suddenly changed 
his character, but that his means had sunk away ; 
that the ground broke down under his feet, that the 
whole fabric of Turkish power has for years stood 
upon a vault, and that the first rush of a hostile force 
beyond the mountains burst it in. The empire fell less 
by the casualty of war, than by the course of nature. 
To the Christian there is a loftier view than the 
sepulchre of this fierce sovereignty ; he sees in the 
wavings of the sword that laid it there, the uncon- 
scious instrument of a power, which it is guilt lightly 
to name, but which may be, at this crisis, commenc- 
ing that superb and terrible course of mingled mercy 
and retribution, which will yet lay a world in ruin, 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 21 

to raise it to a splendour beyond the imagination 
of man. 

But no part of providential wisdom precludes the 
exercise of human means. The first public duty is, 
to follow the light of our understandings ; and the 
first dictate of those understandings is, to summon 
the whole strength of our country to a vigorous, 
determined, and principled repulsion of the general 
enemy of Europe. 

The sultan is virtually no more. The Ottoman 
empire is practically cast out of its place as an Euro- 
pean kingdom. The whole strength of Europe 
could not raise it on its feet again. If it be suffered 
to exist for a few years longer, they must be years 
of helplessness, sustained only by the nursing of the 
European cabinets. The breath of life is no more 
in those fiery nostrils, that once blasted the conti- 
nent. The corpse lies there : it may lie in state, but 
it is beyond all the unguents of the earth ; it must 
henceforth dissolve into its original dust and air. 

Russia is paramount, and the continental powers 
must prepare for desperate resistance, or abject sub- 
mission. There is no alternative. Russia must be 
extinguished, or must extend. As well might we 
stop the fall of the lava, when it has once mounted 
to the summit of the volcano ; it must rush on, by the 
law of its creation, turning all the material ove r 
which it rolls into the fuel of its flame. Every 
nation which stoops to the will of the Russian cabinet 



22 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

must become a slave. And the first service de- 
manded of it will be, to spend its blood in making 
slaves of the surrounding nations. 

By the treaty of Adrianople, Russia is in posses- 
sion of the Euxine. There never was a gift more 
comprehensive of empire. With the Euxine in 
his power, it is no matter to the Czar under what 
name Constantinople may be governed. The city is 
his ; the monarch is his minister ; the people are his 
people ; for he can at his will, burn down the Sera- 
glio, cashier the sovereign, and exile the people. If it 
be his will, he can even build a city on the Asiatic side 
of the Bosphorus, which favoured by his patronage, 
and sustained by his commerce, would drain away 
every piastre from its European rival, and leave Con- 
stantinople a ruin, within twenty years. 

The possession of the Euxine was the only thing 
wanting to make Russia one of the Mediterranean 
powers ; and we all see how directly that extraordi- 
nary possession gives her the means of being the 
first of the Mediterranean powers. On this subject the 
map might be enough ; but we shall give professional 
authority. Captain Jones, R.N., in his late Russian 
tour, thus speaks of the capabilities of the Euxine : 

( Russia would have here a most excellent nursery 
for seamen, as every necessary article for building 
and rigging ships would soon spontaneously 'flow to 
the banks of the great rivers, as well as to their 
common port — the Liman. 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 23 

* In point of fact, has not the practicability of 
this on the largest scale been already proved, by 
the erection on the Black Sea of a military marine, 
comprising ships of one hundred and ten guns, which 
when brought to their lightest draught of water, will 
swim deeper than the heaviest merchantmen ? 

* Those ships of war, though brought down on 
camels (wooden floats) from Cherson, Nicholief, &c, 
as low as Kilbourin, have at the latter place been 
always fitted for sea ; so that it is absurd to talk, as 
is now commonly done, of those shoals forming an 
insuperable objection to the Liman being applied to 
the purposes of commerce. For, on the contrary, 
the Liman presents ten times the advantages to 
Russia, that the Lagunes of Venice ever did to that 
commercial and haughty republic. In short, with- 
out going into detail, were the commercial properties 
of the Liman and its rivers properly understood, I 
cannot see where the mercantile prosperity and en- 
terprise of Russia need stop. 

' Not only might she enjoy a most profitable trade 
on the Black Sea, on that of Azof, and the Medi- 
terranean ; but extend her commerce to every part of 
the globe ! Instead of the sands at the mouth of the 
Dnieper, and the reported dangerous navigation of 
the Black Sea, proving obstacles, they would form 
the best possible school for making hardy and ex- 
perienced seamen, similar to our north-country sailors, 
who are acknowledged to be the best in the world, 



l M< POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

because most of the ports are rendered difficult to 
approach on account of bars and shoals, and the 
whole navigation to London is one of the most dan- 
gerous and difficult in existence, and consequently 
calls forth all the energy and enterprise of which man 
is capable. 

1 So that, in time, a numerous and hardy race of 
seamen would be formed, merely by the trade on the 
Black Sea and that of Azo£ Those two seas present 
an amazing extent of coast, when it is considered 
that the former is 600 miles in length, and 330 broad 
in the widest part, and 142 in the narrowest, while 
the latter is 186 miles in length, and 90 in breadth. 

' Both possess that which renders them an invalu- 
able nursery for good seamen, namely, every des- 
cription of coast, depth of water, and variety of 
currents. It has been well observed, that the country 
which possesses the greatest line of coast must ever 
prove superior in point of seamen. Now, including 
the 786 miles, the length of the Black Sea and that 
of Azof, it must be remembered that the extent of 
coast, without regarding sinuosities, is, at least, 1,600 
miles. 

' No other nation would ever be able to compete 
with them, on account of the easy rate at which the 
Russians could build, fit, and sail, their vessels ; the 
empire producing, within itself, every necessary ar- 
ticle for both building and equipping, at an extraor- 
dinarily low price, and in the greatest abundance ; 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 25 

while the natives are accustomed to live on the hardest 
fare. But should they become refined, still all or- 
dinary provisions are extremely reasonable ; and there 
is little doubt that Russian ships could be built and 
navigated at nearly half the expense of any other 
nation, particularly in the Black Sea. 

' Indeed, when I survey the maritime resources of 
this great empire, I cannot persuade myself that 
Russia is not destined to become a great naval and 
commercial power. However, from the existing 
prejudices on the part of the natives to anything 
connected with the sea, there cannot be a doubt that 
much time will elapse before such a material change 
can be produced in their habits, as to verify my pre- 
diction. But, should the present or a future sovereign 
be duly impressed with the importance of the sub- 
ject, it is impossible to say how soon such an alteration 
might be effected, particularly when we consider the 
acknowledged docility of temper which all the common 
natives possess.' 

We are to recollect that this intelligent observer's 
opinion was given before the Turkish war ; that the 
weight of the Russian power is now directed to the 
Mediterranean ; that a navy in the Black Sea is the 
essential instrument of success ; and that the Sea of 
Marmora may soon be only a place of exercise for the 
fleets pouring from the great Russian dock-yard of 
the Black Sea. 

What has Russia actually gained in territory ? The 



26 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia are, at this 
hour, in possession of her troops, raising forces to 
be incorporated with those troops, paying their reve- 
nues into the hands of her officers, and under a direct 
process of separation from every former Turkish in- 
terest by the ejection of every Turkish inhabitant 
within the eighteen months to come. Nothing can 
be more complete than this possession. The future 
appointment of hospodars, will be merely the ap- 
pointment of Russian viceroys. The two provinces 
are larger than the whole of England ! 

But their value is not to be measured even by their 
size. The soil, neglected as it has been by the Turks, 
is among the most fertile in the world. The popula- 
tion, reduced to less than a million, is capable of 
being raised to ten millions I The mountains contain 
mines of great value. It would be ridiculous to sup- 
pose that those countries will ever be restored to more 
than a nominal independence. We have no security 
that even this nominal independence will not be 
rapidly merged in declared sovereignty . The Crimea, 
a few years ago, was suffered to boast of this nominal 
independence, but its boasting was brief ; the Khan 
was stripped of his sceptre, and glad to lay his calpac 
at the feet of Catherine. The Tartars of the Kuban 
were indulged with the same boast, and found it 
equally short-lived. The treaty of Kainardgi, in 1734, 
declared them unequivocally free, unanswerable to 
any foreign power, and to be governed only by their 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 27 

hereditary chieftains of the race of Gengis. Their 
freedom was scarcely conceded, when it was swept 
away at a stroke of the pen. Those provinces will be 
integral possessions of Russia, when she pleases, and 
strong holds for her ambition in whatever line it may 
spread through western Europe. For operations 
against the weakest part of the Austrian empire they 
form an incomparable base ; and they do more — they 
command the Danube; and, by the Danube, com- 
mand a passage through the heart of Europe, whether 
for trade or conquest, from Ratisbon to Constanti- 
nople. 

The mind grows exhausted and the hand weary in 
following the stupendous extent of power which 
Russia has already within her grasp, and the still 
more stupendous extent which lies before her vision. 
Her march into Asia Minor has given her a fixture 
there which no retreat of her troops will nullify. 
She already feels the boundless value of the acquisi- 
tion, and is craftily negociating for the possession of 
Trebizond. If she withdraw her demand now, she 
will not be the less sure to gain her point in another 
direction ; and her point is, the complete command 
of the southern shore of the Black Sea, and with it 
the complete command of a new route for the com- 
merce of India and China with Europe. Erzeroum, 
which is in Russian hands, de facto, and which will 
soon follow the fate of Bucharest, has been for a long 
period the centre of the principal traffic of northern 



28 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

Persia, the cities of the Caucasus, and Arabia, with 
Constantinople. The Indian traffic of Russia has 
hitherto been trifling, from the dangers of the desert, 
and from the distance and expense of land-carriage. 
But the possession of Trebizond, even without that 
of Erzeroum, which, however, must be a dependent 
on the former : inRussian hands, would instantly lay 
open a route from India, requiring but the trivial 
land-carriage of 400 miles ; from Moosul on the 
Tigris, to Erzeroum, being but 250 miles, and from 
Erzeroum to Trebizond being but 150. In a com- 
mercial point of view, those positions w T ould be of an 
importance totally beyond calculation. They would 
be, in fact, the keys to the whole trade of India 
with Europe ; in other words, the keys to the wealth 
of the world. But they would also be the keys to 
the territorial possession of the finest regions of the 
world — western and central Asia. A military esta- 
blishment touching with its flanks the Tigris at 
Moosul, and the Euxine at Trebizond, and sustained 
by the supplies so easily furnished by the Russian 
possession of the Euxine, would be irresistible by any 
force from the Caucasus to the Himmaleh ; Persia, 
Caubul, and the Aifghaun territory, would be as 
easy a prey as Georgia ; and the true spirit in which 
Russia must be viewed, is that of a power essentially 
military, and if adopting commerce with extraordi- 
nary avidity, yet adopting it only as a means of 
conquest. 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 29 

The founder of this measureless empire saw that, 
without a fleet, his conquest must be limited to the 
north, and that centuries might pass before Russia 
became European. He instantly made the grand 
experiment of a navy. He had but one sea, the 
Baltic. His ports were shallow, hazardous, and what 
was still more disheartening, a mass of ice for six 
months in the year. But his nature was the 
true one for erecting such an empire. It was alike 
remarkable for daring enthusiasm and indefatigable 
obstinacy. He fixed on a spot in the north of his 
dominions, where the climate and the ground seemed 
equally to forbid the habitation of man. But he 
persevered. He turned the course of rivers — he 
drove piles into the mighty swamp — he hewed down 
forests — he tore up rocks — and on heaps of treasure 
that might have purchased a new kingdom, and the 
more fearful expenditure of a mass of human life that 
might have won it by arms, he founded his new 
capital of the world ! 

The price was enormous, and it could have been 
contemplated by no other mind than the remorseless 
and barbarian grandeur of Peter's. But it laid the 
foundation of an empire, which already exceeds, in 
magnitude, all that the earth has ever seen of domin- 
ion. The Roman empire, in its most palmy time, 
the days of Trajan, extended but 3000 miles from east 
to west, and 2000 from north to south. The Rus- 
sian, at this hour of its comparative infancy, extends 



30 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OP RUSSIA. 

5,000 miles from east to west, and 3000 from north 
to south. The Roman was the growth of eight 
centuries, the Russian of one. If a vast portion of 
its Asiatic territory is wilderness, even this is all 
capable of supporting life, and is interspersed with 
tracts of great fertility, is intersected with chains of 
metallic mountains, and is filled with rivers teeming 
with human food, and capable of forming the finest 
inland navigation in the world. 

But central Russia contains a dense population, in 
provinces productive of corn, wine, and oil. By the 
seizure of the Crimea and of Poland, they have found 
a permanent outlet for their products ; and they are 
rapidly growing in opulence, productiveness and po- 
pulation. The union of the Hospodariates with 
Russia will more than double their value, by extend- 
ing their outlets. And the Hospodariates will in- 
fallibly be united to Russia, at the first moment that 
she may think herself secure in the feebleness or the 
corruption of the great countervailing kingdoms of 
Europe. It will be no more than the continuance 
of that policy, by which she has drawn, one by one, 
into her vortex, every " independent" territory 
subjected to her treacherous alliance : Georgia, Cour- 
land, the Crimea, the Ukraine, and Poland. 

The Indian trade has been, in all ages, but another 
name for the most sudden and extraordinary accumu- 
lation of wealth in every nation which, by turns, 
possessed its monopoly. Venice, Genoa, Lisbon, 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 31 

and Amsterdam, were only the successors of Bagdad, 
Constantinople, Aleppo, and Alexandria, in gains 
which, for the time, placed them at the head of com- 
mercial cities. England alone has not derived from 
India that opulence which the "golden Peninsula" 
had always poured into the lap of the favoured na- 
tion. But the reason is obvious. Dominion with us, 
had superseded trade. We have expended, and nobly, 
on our magnificent crown of India, the gold that we 
might have carried away in tribute to our commercial 
mastery. But, to Russia, the Indian trade would 
be clear gain ; there would be no laborious and ex- 
pensive voyage of 16,000 miles, liable to all the 
chances of the ocean. The whole route from Surat 
to the mouth of the Danube would be but 3000 
miles, of which 2600 would be on the smooth Indian 
seas, up the Persian Gulf and the Tigris ; a mere 
canal carriage, with only the narrow interval between 
the Tigris and the Euxine requiring land convey* 
ance. The whole of the great northern route between 
China, Japan, Upper Tartary, and Europe, must be 
in possession of that power which is in possession of 
the Volga and the Don. The European merchant, too, 
will not look upon those extraordinary facilities with 
indifference. He will either transfer his capital to 
Russia, or connect himself with her trade. The dis- 
tance between the Danube and the Rhine is nothing. 
A canal might be cut in a year, that would join them. 
The surveys for this canal have been already laid 



3% POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

down. The project has been already stated among 
the monied men of Europe. The expense is esti- 
mated at little more than half a million. And this 
canal would give a direct and unbroken line of water 
carriage from the tower of London to the gate of the 
Seraglio. 

For the general good of mankind, we should re- 
joice in such a facility. But the first benefit, and 
immeasurably the greatest, would be gained by 
Russia ; and by Russia only for the power of more 
extended subjugation. The man shuts his eyes on 
history, and is neither politician nor patriot, who will 
not see that the whole spirit of the court of St. 
Petersburg has at all times been territorial aggrandise- 
ment ; and that whether with a smiling face, and a 
lip teeming with self-denial and moderation ; or with 
the sword in her hand, and her lip pouring out hatred 
and fury, she has incessantly urged her claims to 
universal sovereignty. She has had " More, more," 
graven upon her iron heart, and at this hour she 
is prompted to broader and more reckless seizures, 
by the success of her arms, the weakness of her oppo- 
nents, the force of her position, and ths superstitions 
of her people. There is something like an inevit- 
able necessity of going forward, imposed upon her, 
alike by her remaining barbarism, and her rapidly 
acquired knowledge of the arts and the artifices of 
civilized life. "With Asiatic multitudes, and European 
tactics moulding the wild and death-devoted myriads 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 33 

of a Gengiskhan, by the military system of a Na- 
poleon ; with the still more singular mixture of the 
deep submission of the Asiatic slave, and the fierce 
freedom of the Tartar ; foreign war, lavish of blood, 
and perpetual in its thirst of conquest, seems scarce- 
ly so much the vice of her government, as the tenure 
of its existence. Let the Czar sheathe his sword 
to-morrow, and the humane folly will find its reward 
in the dagger. Let Russia stop in her career of 
aggrandizement, and she will be plunged into instant 
convulsion — the great tide which had been going 
smoothly along, gradually covering kingdom after 
kingdom, will be checked only to break and swell 
into billows. The popular spirit would disdain the 
pacific throne — the wild appanages to the sceptre 
would forget their allegiance, when she laid up the 
sword in the repositories of the state. The whole 
new and frowning vassalage that even now bites its 
chains, would feel them lifted from its neck, only to 
beat them into the falchion and the spearhead again. 
Let Russia disband her army, and abjure ambition ; 
and from that hour she has parted with the living 
principle of her fearful and unnatural supremacy : 
the talisman is shattered in pieces, and her empire is 
a dream. 

But if Russia is to be resisted ; the question arises, 
by whom ? Is England to be the sole antagonist, or 
is there any capacity in the European powers, to forge 
a chain strong enough to bind down her ambition ? 



34 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

The natural expedient is, of course, the latter. It is 
scarcely to be doubted, that a combination of the great 
European powers would be still able to constrain 
Russia, as it tore down Napoleon. The ill success 
of the early coalitions of the French war arose alone 
from their imperfect combination, and their imperfect 
combination from the criminal corruption of their 
ministers, and the weak jealousy of their sovereigns. 

It is remarkable, that Austria and Prussia never 
combined but twice during the whole revolutionary 
war. Once, at its commencement, under the Duke 
of Brunswick, a combination distinguished for its 
feebleness, and dissolved in a single campaign, pro- 
bably by the French crown jewels ; and once at the 
close, when, formed under more vigorous guidance, 
and inspired with the necessity of extinguishing Na- 
poleon, the new powers fought side by side, and, 
with England in their van, trampled his unrighteous 
and homicidal diadem into dust. 

But the change of times has created formidable 
changes in the constitution of Europe. Austria is 
the first barrier. But of all the great powers, Aus- 
tria is at once the weakest, and the most likely to fall 
under Russian temptation. The partition of Poland 
was an act, whose impolicy, in the Austrian view, 
was as palpable, as its guilt was notorious. It loaded 
Austria alike with a share in that guilty responsibility, 
and brought her frontier into direct exposure to 
Russia. 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 35 

And yet the bribe for this heinous act, in which 
crime and folly struggled for the mastery, was only 
the wretched province of Gallicia. How are we to 
be secure, that some equally wretched province of 
Servia will not equally tempt the Austrian passion 
for lording it over deserts ? and that Prince Metter- 
nich will not congratulate himself on the ultra-diplo- 
matic dexterity, by which he thus, at once, averts a 
Russian war, secures an additional territory, and 
keeps himself in power ? 4^ 

The tardiness of Austria is proverbial. Her ter- 
ritory is an immense expanse of states thinly peopled ; 
one half of them scarcely above barbarism ; and the 
great majority either in direct discontent, as the 
Hungarian provinces, or utterly careless who their 
master may be ; as Croatia, Transylvania, and the 
whole range of her south-eastern dominions. Italy, 
her chief boast, is her first peril. The Italians, a 
contemptible and vicious people, deserve the chain, 
and will always be slaves, while society among them 
continues the idle and profligate thing it is. This 
great European haunt of the most grovelling super- 
stition, and the most open licentiousness, its natural 
and unfailing offspring — must be under the govern- 
ment of the jailor and the hangman ; but Italy, from 
the Alps to Calabria, hates the name of Austrian, 
and the first foreign banner that waves to the winds 
of the Appennine will be shouted after by Italy as a 
deliverer. Yet the nervous eagerness of retention is 

D 2 



36 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

as keen as the subtle and undying hatred of the 
slave. And the threat of a Russian invasion of Italy, 
a threat which a Mediterranean fleet would always 
render ominous, must lay the Austrian cabinet at the 
mercy of the Czar. 

Prussia, the next hope, would be utterly unable to 
make head alone against a Russian force pressing 
on her from the Polish frontier ; and the question of 
her preferring the hazards of war to the easy enjoy- 
ment of the bribe which Russia could so easily offer, 
and would so undoubtedly offer, is one which may 
well perplex the politician. Of all the great Euro- 
pean powers, Prussia is the most exposed to^Russian 
invasion. Her strength is wholly in her army, the 
most expensive, artificial, and precarious of all de- 
fences. We have already seen it vanish away, like 
a mist, before the fierce brilliancy of Napoleon. It 
perished in a day; literally, between sunrise and 
sunset the army of Prussia was a mass of confusion, 
the kingdom at the feet of a conqueror, the king 
crownless, and the nation captive. Prussia has no 
mountains, where a bold peasantry might supply the 
place of discipline by courage, and make nature fight 
for them ; no great rivers for defence ; no ranges of 
wild territory in which the steps of an invader might 
be wearied by long pursuit ; no fierce and iron cli- 
mate in which the clouds and snow might war against 
the human presumption that dared to assault the 
majesty of Winter in his own domain. 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 37 

All is open, brief, and level : the frontier strag- 
gling and penetrable in every direction ; even the 
population, at once too scattered to resist a vigorous 
enemy, and too close to deprive him of their services. 
In every war since the foundation of the kingdom, 
even under the subtle and daring generalship of the 
second Frederic, Prussia was never invaded, but to 
be overrun. "With this justified sense of peril on the 
one side, and with the splendid donations which 
Russia has it in her power to offer, on the other ; 
there must be no trivial necessity to urge Prussia 
against the immense preponderance of her gigantic 
neighbour. 

Family alliances, the recollection of the late war, 
and the value of a continental support against Aus- 
trian ambition, which has never forgotten the loss of 
Silesia, have made Prussia for many years look to the 
cabinet of St. Petersburg as her natural confederate. 
Her bias is already in the strongest degree Russian. 
We might discover this, even from the tone of the 
Prussian journals during the Turkish war. Russia 
was the theme of perpetual panegyric. Her defeats 
were ' victories,' and her policy ' consummate in 
ability and vigour.' 

But a tangible temptation is ready to be offered, 
and it is one that once before won the Prussian 
heart. Hanover, and the mouths of the Elbe and 
Ems, would give her manufacturing and commer- 
cial wealth, and Hanover would be the bribe. With 



38 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

Austria and Prussia thus at her control, as a barrier 
against France, (if France too were not drawn into the 
snare by the easy promise of Egypt ;) Russia would 
have leisure for her operations to secure the supre- 
macy of the Mediterranean, and but one rival to 
oppose — England. 

If we shall be asked, what was to be done? we 
answer, that the British cabinet ought two years ago 
to have declared to Russia, that the first shot fired 
against the Porte, was a declaration of war against 
England. And the words should have been followed, 
not by feeble applications to foreign courts, to 
ask whether they would suffer England to speak her 
mind ; but by the sailing of a fleet of twenty sail of 
the line for the Black Sea, with orders to burn every 
Russian establishment on its shore to the ground ; 
and by the sailing of another fleet for the blockade of 
the Baltic, and the burning of Cronstadt. The Czar 
would have instantly returned his sword into the 
sheath ; while the healing and protecting sovereignty 
of England would have been acknowledged as a bless- 
ing to the world. 

No empire of ancient or modern history, equals 
Russia in the rapid, and yet steady, accumulation of 
power. The chieftaincy of the Tartar tribes may have 
rushed over deserts with a more impetuous speed, 
but they left them the deserts which they found 
them. Their capitals were but encampments ; their 
career was as trackless as the wind: the day that 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 39 

laid the conqueror in the grave, entombed the 
empire. 

But the Russian conquests have been like the Ro- 
man : where they have once advanced, they have never 
receded. Every year has thus seen them acquiring 
new substance. Even when they have been checked, 
the check has only given them new solidity ; if the 
lava was extinguished by the tide, it was only to be 
turned into rock, and even that rock, only to form a 
point of projection for another fiery overflow. 

A slight recapitulation will show, with what a 
remorseless spirit of aggrandisement, Russia has 
toiled to fulfil her destiny. 

In 1772, by the guilty partition of Poland, Russia 
obtained the provinces, since called White Russia. 

In 1793, at the second partition with Prussia, she 
obtained one half of the remaining territory of 
Poland, with 5,000,000 of souls. 

In 1815, the duchy of Warsaw was erected into a 
kingdom by the congress of Vienna, and has since 
become a Russian province. 

On the side of Sweden, within the last century, 
she obtained Courland, Esthonia, Livonia, and in the 
last war, Finland. 

On the side of Turkey, since Peter the Great, to 
the period of the French war in 1812, she obtained 
possession of the shores of the Euxine, extending to 
the mouth of the Danube, containing nearly 5000 
square miles, with 1 ,902,000 souls. 



40 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OP RUSSIA. 

The Tartar and Cossack conquests gave her 3,289,000 
souls, with boundless territory in the north. 

In central Asia, her advances have been not less 
rapid, yet still more important. She has gained a 
large portion of Armenia and Georgia ; with provinces 
west of the Caspian, extending to the Araxes, and east 
of the Caspian, extending to the Gulf of Balkan. 

She has wrung from Turkey a treaty by which 
the Sultan proposes to transfer to her what he did not 
possess himself, the allegiance of the Circassians. 
For this iniquitous conquest, Russia is now arming a 
powerful force, and the contest is henceforth to be be- 
tween discipline and patriotism, the slaves of a despot, 
and brave men fighting for their firesides. So little 
is known of the Circassians, that no one can conjec- 
ture the result of such a struggle, but every man can 
know on which side the right lies, and every feeling 
of humanity and justice must be on the side of the 
brave defenders of their country. 

But a question of still higher interest, and the chief 
ground of our referring to the subject of Russian 
power, is its final object; — the stimulus which it may 
be appointed to give to the vast, stagnant world of 
the east, — the awakening of which it may be the ap- 
pointed instrument to the slumbering faculties of 
mankind in the mighty regions of Mahometanism. 

It is unquestionable, that influences are moving in 
that direction, of which no man has hitherto dreamed ; 
that the darkness which closed over the Greek em- 



POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 41 

pire in the fifteenth century, and which seemed to 
grow only deeper and more lifeless, in the growing 
illumination of Europe, is beginning to be shot 
through with these gleamings of unexpected light 
which portend the dawn. Whether the progress of 
Russia is to level the road for the triumphal car of 
civilization, and civilization itself to be only the 
forerunner of the gospel, are lofty questions ; but 
it is clear, that some mighty change is approaching, 
whether by the hand of conquest, extinguishing 
barbarism in its own blood, or by some other more 
unselfish and animating agency ; whether by the gory 
sword of Russia, or the golden sceptre of England ; 
who shall reveal ? 

Yet, upon this decision may turn the question of 
universal peace or universal war ; of the descent of 
Europe into the dungeon, or of its advance into un- 
clouded day ; of the absorption of all its faculties into 
the single brute element of military force, or their 
brilliant and expansive developement into the con- 
summate enjoyments, knowledge, and power over 
nature, which were once intended for man. 

Rut the fall of Russia too is fated. No nation 
beginning as she has done, and persevering in the 
principles which stamped her character in the cradle, 
can finally escape the common justice of providence. 
With man for her victim, craft for her policy, 
and plunder for her ambition, she must be only 
ripening ruin for herself. No nation of the modern 



42 POLITICS AND PROJECTS OF RUSSIA. 

world has so exclusively made rapine the principle 
of her progress ; her downfall is therefore inevitable. 
Yet it may be still remote. The Cain of nations, she 
may be suffered to wander far, and wander long ; to 
build the city and found the tribe : she may even be 
guarded from the common indignation of man, but 
it will be, by the mark on her forehead; and, pre- 
served like the first homicide, like him she will 
finally perish in the general ruin, which guilt, am- 
bition and violence will have drawn down upon the 
Infidel world. 



III. 

PROVIDENCE. 



Written in 1828. 
Nothing is more demonstrable, than that providence 
acts by a system of general laws. Religion is 
the final purpose of society ; and the law in this in- 
stance is, that a false religion mutilates not only the 
morals of the people, but the security of the state ; 
that where the corruption of the altar has arrived at 
its height, the ruin of the throne is at hand ; and 
that ultimately the judgment which extinguishes the 
corrupted religion, along with it extinguishes the 
demoralized nation. 

It will be fully admitted ; that a false religion may 
be long endured, and a profligate nation may be slow 
to perish ; because large room is left for the operation 
of man's free agency, and the influence of divine know- 
ledge. Even the violences of powerful empires may be 
controlled into instruments of the divine hand. They 
may be the tornadoes, suffered to slay and devastate, 
while they clear the atmosphere : the fierce instincts of 
the lion and the tiger, that sweep the forest of the lesser 
and more molesting beasts of prey ; the inroad of the 



44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

pestilence, that dispeoples the land of a degenerate 
race, and leaves it open for a nobler posterity. But 
the law is inevitable ; the false religion saps the state, 
and the fortress built on the sand does not more surely 
sink, however furnished with battlement and tower ; 
when some underground torrent has burst upon 
the foundation; than the empire goes down before 
the eye. Those may well be warnings to the thrones 
of Europe ; but our present view is more with 
reference to the singular preservation of our country, 
than to its perils ; and more to the proud wisdom of 
its religious principles, than to the frailty of nations, 
unconsciously, yet hourly, building their own tombs. 
Of the peculiar religious corruption of mankind 
before the flood, we have no certain knowledge ; 
but it is clear, that they had debased the origi- 
nal idea of God ; and it is the natural operation 
of the mind, to invent a substitute ; they must 
have had a false religion. They and their false 
religion perished together. The idolatry of Canaan 
was next proscribed ; and with that idolatry the nation 
perished. — The corruption of the Jewish covenant 
next wrought its downfall ; and with it the na- 
tion perished. — The fall of Roman Paganism was 
next predicted by the Divine Spirit ; and with it the 
whole civil frame of the Western Empire, then the 
supreme seat of Paganism, perished in the midst of 
boundless slaughter. — The corrupt religion of the 
later Rome, the second shape of Paganism, shall per- 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 46 

ish : and even from the historic analogy of the past, its 
fall must involve a vast extent of sanguinary overthrow. 
But prophecy is explicit; and all other language 
is weak to its fiery breathings of the fierce and resist- 
less judgment, that shall yet bury the Popedom from 
the eye of man. 

But it further declares, that the great visitation is 
not to be limited to Europe ; that vengeance shall 
spread ; and the brutish idolatries and hideous cruel- 
ties of the Barbarian superstitions shall be wrapped 
in the same cloud of wrath ; until the world, renova- 
ted by some powerful elemental agency, is finally 
prepared for a purer generation of man. 

When those days of calamity are to come, is still 
expressly hidden in the Divine councils ; but the fate 
of our own country in the trial, may well exercise the 
deepest feelings of human nature. She may be severely 
tried ; it is scarcely conceivable that in so vast an 
extent of suffering she should remain untouched ; 
but it must be acknowledged at once as a high source 
of national hope, and a confirmation of national prin- 
ciple, that for the three hundred years since the 
Reformation she has been sustained, almost by the 
visible hand of Heaven. 

Even, to take the evidence from our own day — in 
the democratic tempest, which has yet scarcely cleared 
off the surface of Europe, England, of all nations, 
stood in the most direct road of peril. In Revo- 
lution, we had the natural faculties, the natural im- 



46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

pulses, and even the hereditary powers, to have flung 
even France behind ; a more democratic constitution, a 
more democratic spirit, than any other monarchical 
people ; a national character, more daring, disciplined, 
and indefatigable ; a bolder and more numerous array 
of the higher ranks on the popular side; means of 
popular correspondence more rapid and more secure ; 
means of public inflammation more prepared by the 
general spirit of the people ; and above all, and con- 
centrating all, the press, an open and inexhaus- 
tible armoury of weapons, old and new, which 
no power of government could shut upon the 
people, and where the sound of the insurrectionary 
workman was ringing day and night. The assault 
of the throne, and the triumph of faction, would 
have found us no novices : we should have been 
driven to no obscure search among the reliques 
of the middle ages, like our neighbours, for the 
Revolutionary costume. We had the whole picture- 
gallery of subversion among our heir-looms, scarcely 
a century old ; we had but to follow the fashions 
of men, whose names were familiar as household 
Words. The desperate triumphs of the Great Re- 
bellion were recorded before our eyes, — the blood 
of the Republicans was running through our bosoms. 
Yet from this unrivalled peril England was saved : 
and more than saved ; raised to be successively 
the refuge, the champion, and the leader, of Mon- 
archy throughout the civilized world. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 47 

In the interpositions of Providence the fewness, 
yet the grandeur, of the instruments is a distin- 
guishing feature. 

If this high evidence was ever given to a nation, 
it was to England, in the French war of 1793. To 
meet the four distinct aspects of the national peril, 
four individuals were successively brought forward ; — 
each possessing peculiar faculties ; — each applying 
those faculties to a peculiar crisis; — each performing 
a service which could confessedly have been per- 
formed by no other of his contemporaries ; — each 
forming a class by himself; and each achieving a 
fame which neither time nor rivalry can ever dimi- 
nish in the memory of England. 

In the commencement of this greatest of European 
conflicts, a mighty mind stood at the head of English 
affairs ; William Pitt ! a man fitted, beyond all his 
predecessors, for his time ; possessed of all the qualities 
essential to the first rank in the conduct of Empire, an 
eloquence singularly various, vivid, and noble ; a forti- 
tude of soul that nothing could shake or surprise ; a 
vigour and copiousness of resource inexhaustible. 
Yet he had a still higher ground of influence with 
the nation, in his unsullied honour, and visible supe- 
riority to all the selfish objects of public life ; in the 
utter stainlessness of his heart and habits ; and in 
the unquestioned purity of that zeal which burned 
in his bosom, as on an altar, for the glory of 
England. The integrity of Pitt gave him a mas- 



48 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

tery over the national feelings, which could not have 
been won by the most brilliant faculties alone. In 
the strong financial measures, made necessary by the 
new pressures of the time, and to which all the sen- 
sitiveness of a commercial people was awake, the 
nation would have trusted no other leader. But 
they followed the great Minister with the most pro- 
found reliance. They honoured his matchless un- 
derstanding ; but they honoured still more the lofty 
principle and pure love of country, which they felt 
to be incapable of deception. 

The British minister formed a class by "himself. 
He was the leader, not only of English council, but 
of European. He stood on an elevation, to which 
no man before him had ascended ; he fought the 
battle of the world, until the moment when the 
struggle was to be changed into victory. If he died in 
the night of Europe, it was when the night was on 
the verge of dawn. If it could ever be said of a pub- 
lic man, that he concentrated in himself the genius 
and the heart of an empire, and was at once the 
spirit and the arm of a mighty people, Pitt was 
that man ! 

Another extraordinary intellect was next sum- 
moned, for a separate purpose, scarcely less essential. 
The Revolutionary influence had . spread itself ex- 
tensively through the country. A crowd of malig- 
nant writers, from whose pens every drop that fell 
was the venom of atheism and anarchy, were hourly 



TJIK FRENCH REVOLUTION. 49 

labouring to pervert casual discontent into general re- 
bellion. Success had made them insolent; and the 
country was rapidly filled with almost open revolt. 
Their connexion with France was palpable ; every 
roar of the tempest in that troubled sky found a cor- 
responding echo in our own ; we had the fetes, the 
societies, and almost the frenzy of France ; every 
burst of strange fire from the wild and bloody rites 
which Republicanism had begun to celebrate, flashed 
over our horizon ; every pageant of its fantastic and 
merciless revelries found imitators ready to rival it on 
our shore. 

Burke arose ; his whole life had been an uncon- 
scious preparation for the moment. His early po- 
litical connexions had taught him of what matter 
Democracy was made. He had seen it, like Milton's 
Sin, 

" woman to the waist and fair, 



But ending foul in many a scaly fold." 

His parliamentary life had deeply acquainted him 
with the hollowness and grimace, the selfish disinter- 
estedness, and the profligate purity of faction ; and, 
thus, armed in panoply, he took the field. 

He moved among the whole multitude of querulous 
and malignant authorship, a giant among pigmies : he 
smote their Dagon in its own temple ; he left them 
without a proselyte or a name. His eloquence, the 
finest and most singular combination that the world 
has ever seen, of magnificent fancy and profound phi- 
losophy, if too deliberate and too curious in its 

E 



50 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

developments, for the rapid demands of public 
debate, here found the true use for which it had 
been given — here found the true region of its beauty 
and its power; shining and sweeping along at its 
will, like the summer-cloud, alternately touched 
with every glorious hue of heaven, and pouring 
down the torrents and the thunders. No work 
within human memory ever wrought an effect so 
sudden, profound, and saving, as the volume on the 
French Revolution. It instantly broke the Revo- 
lutionary spell ; the national eyes were opened ; the 
fictitious oracles, to which the people had listened as 
to wisdom unanswerable, were struck dumb at the 
coming of the true. The nobles, the populace, the 
professions, the whole nation, from the cottage to 
the throne, were awakened, as by the sound of a 
trumpet ; and the same summons which awoke 
them, filled their hearts with the patriot ardour that 
in the day of battle made them invincible. Burke, 
too, formed a class by himself. As a public writer 
he had no equal and no similar. Like Pitt, he was 
alone. And like Pitt, when his appointed labour 
was done, he died ! 

England had now been prepared for war ; and had 
been purified from disaffection. Her war was naval ; 
and her fleets, commanded by a succession of brave 
men, were constantly victorious. But the struggle 
for life and death was still to come. A new and 
tremendous antagonist — the most extraordinary man 
of the last thousand years, appeared in the field. 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 51 

France, relieved from the distractions of the demo- 
cracy, and joining all the vigour of Republicanism to 
all the massiveness of monarchy, flung herself into the 
arms of Napoleon. His sagacity saw that England 
was the true barrier against universal conquest ; and, 
at the head of the fleets of Europe, he moved to bat- 
tle for the dominion of the Seas ! 

A man was now raised up, whose achievements 
cast all earlier fame into the shade. In a profes- 
sion of proverbial talent and heroism, Nelson 
instantly transcended the noblest rivalry. His 
valour and his genius were meteor-like ; they rose 
above all, and threw a splendour upon all. His name 
was synonymous with victory. He was the guid- 
ing star of the fleets of England. Each of his 
battles would have been a title to immortality ; but 
his last exploit, in which the mere terror of his name 
drove the enemy's fleet before him through half the 
world, to be annihilated at Trafalgar ; had no parallel 
in the history of arms. Nelson, too, formed a class \ 
by himself. Emulation has never approached him. 
He swept the enemy's last ship from the sea ; and, 
like his two mighty compatriots, having done his 
work of glory, he died ! 

Within scarcely more than two years from the 
deaths of Pitt and Nelson, another high intervention 
was to come. The Spanish war let in light upon the 
world. England, the conqueror of the seas, was now 
called to be the leader of the armies of Europe. A 
soldier now arose, born for this illustrious task. He, 

E 2 



52 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

too, has formed a class by himself. Long without an 
equal in the field, his last victory left him without a 
competitor. Yet while Wellington survives, per- 
sonal praise must be left to the gratitude of his 
country and to the imperishable homage of the future. 
But the praise of the country needs wait for no 
epitaph. In our age, the fate of arms has been tried 
on a scale so far transcending the old warfare of the 
world ; the character of hostilities has been so much 
more decisive, vigorous, and overwhelming ; the 
chances of the field have so directly involved the 
life and death of nations ; that all the past grows pale 
to the present. If the martial renown of a great 
people is to be measured by the difficulties overcome, 
by the magnitude of the success, or the mighty name 
of the vanquished ; it is no dishonour to the noblest 
prowess of England in the days of our ancestry, 
to give the palm to that generous national valour, and 
exhaustless public fire, that heroic sympathy with 
mankind, and lofty devotion to truth, liberty, and 
religion, which have illustrated her in our own. 
It can be no faithlessness to the glorious dead, to 
place in the highest rank of living fame, that 
soldiership, which stopped a torrent of conquest 
swelled with the wreck of Europe ; redeemed king- 
doms ; overthrew, from battlement to foundation, the 
most powerful military dominion since the days of 
Rome ; and in one consummate victory, hand to hand, 
tore the sword from the grasp, and the diadem from 
the brow, of Napoleon ! 



IV. 

THE KING OF THE FRENCH. 



Written in 1830. 
France now attracts the universal eye, and as a 
great portion of her conduct must be determined by 
the character of her chief, the history of Louis 
Philippe has a peculiar interest at the present time. 

Of all the countries of Europe, France has seldom- 
est seen the succession to her throne disturbed by 
war, conspiracy, or the influence of foreign powers. 
Yet, since the tenth century she has been govern- 
ed by seven dynasties : the Capet, the Valois, the 
Orleans Valois, the Angouleme, the Bourbon, the 
Napoleon, and the Orleans ; on an average, one 
every century. 

The death of Louis le Faineant, a profligate youth, 
left Hugh Capet, who had been appointed his guar- 
dian, master of the crown, in 987. Charles, duke of 
Lorraine, the late king's uncle, disputed his right ; but 
Capet's descent from Charlemagne, and his own intel- 
ligence, moderation, and virtue, secured the affec- 
tions of the people. His dynasty governed France 
down to the fourteenth century, when, in 1328, 



54 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

Charles the Fourth, named the Handsome, died, 
leaving no male issue. 

The Valois branch of the Capets now succeeded ; 
a memorable event in French history, as the origin 
of those dreadful wars with England, which devas- 
tated France for almost a hundred and fifty years. 
The right to the crown was claimed by Edward the 
Third, in virtue of his descent by the female line. 
But the French pleaded the Salique law against him, 
and the nobles chose Philip, the son of Charles de 
Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, and uncle of 
Charles the Handsome. In Charles the Eighth the 
line failed, in 1498. 

The Orleans branch ascended the throne, in the 
person of Louis, Duke of Orleans, cousin of Louis 
the Eleventh. He married a sister of the English 
Henry the Eighth. In speaking of those various 
branches as dynasties, of course we have not taken 
the word in its general sense, of a long succession in 
each, but merely as the change of a direct lineage. 

The Angouleme branch succeeded in 1515. Francis 
duke of Augouleme, the famous Francis the First, the 
rival of Charles the Fifth of Germany, ascending the 
throne, by the death of Louis the Twelfth, without 
issue. The death of Henry the Third, formerly duke 
of Anjou, and king of Poland, the brother of Charles 
the Ninth, (the atrocious author of the massacre of 
St. Bartholomew,) left the crown to the Bourbon 
branch. 



LOUIS PHILIPPK. 55 

In 1589, Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, (the 
famous Henry the Fourth,) was called to the throne. 
He was allied to the Capets, as ninth in descent from 
St. Louis, and was at once a Valois by blood, and a 
Bourbon by parentage. The death of the unfortu- 
nate Louis the Sixteenth on the scaffold, in 1793, 
left France without a monarch, as she had left herself 
without a throne. 

In 1804, Napoleon, the First Consul, was made 
Emperor, and retained his sovereignty till 1814, 
when he abdicated for the first time ; but, returning, 
was finally expelled in 1815. The Bourbons then 
returned. The fatal ordonnances of the 27th of 
July, 1830, overthrew them, and the Orleans branch 
was again summoned to the throne, (August 7th,) 
by the general acclamation of the people, and the 
sanction of the Chamber of Deputies. 

The history of the late duke of Orleans, the father 
of the king, is one of solemn warning to the restless- 
ness and folly of men of rank. It is given with 
reluctance, and given with a full sense of the respect 
due to the virtues of that son who has done so much 
to redeem the name of his line. The duke had 
fortune, high station, and extensive popularity ; 
he had even personal acquirements and no trivial 
ability. But he had a frenzied ambition ; a giddy, 
reckless, and cruel desire of being the first, where 
nature, fidelity, and honour would have kept him 
the second. Yet it is remarkable that he lost his 



56 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

grand prize, the throne, by deficiency of vice / He 
was not prepared te exhibit the due proportion of 
ferocity. He had not made up his mind to drink 
blood, and roar blasphemies, with, the true men of 
the revolution. The Marats outran him in frenzy, 
the Dantons in blasphemy, and the Robespierres in 
massacre. Thus left behind in the popular race of the 
"glorious days" of philosophy and the scaffold, the 
unfortunate duke stood a solitary and forlorn figure, 
for the scoff of the Republic — soon to be its victim. 

The private scandals of French life must find ano- 
ther detail than ours. But they had reached a dread- 
ful extent in the time of the old court of Prance. 
The queen's artless manners had given rise to suspi- 
cions of more than levity, and in the infinite idleness 
of Versailles, and the infinite malice of Paris, she 
had been traduced without mercy. There is not the 
slightest evidence, that she was deserving of the 
slightest of those rumours. Her ease of manner 
arose from an unstained heart, her familiarity was 
innocence, and her open ridicule of the repulsive 
formality of court etiquette, the natural result of 
security of mind. But it is hazardous to stand in 
opposition to the customs of a whole country. The 
profligate countesses, to whom life had but one pro- 
fligate purpose, exclaimed in all their coteries against 
the * indecorums ' of the queen. The profligate 
nobles conceived that even the highest rank of female 
life was no more guarded by virtue, than that of the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 57 

brood of painted and gambling women of their own 
circle. The profligate populace, always' rejoicing at the 
opportunity of lowering their superiors?to the level of 
their own vices, rejoiced at the probability of being 
able to stigmatize a queen, who had the additional 
unpopularity of being an Austrian, the director of 
her weak husband, and the true and known pillar of 
royalty in the councils of France. 

From the year 1787, the Duke of Orleans had 
placed himself in the foremost position, as leader of 
the popular party. The quarrels of the parliament 
of Paris with the court, had compelled the king to 
do something more than eat, dream, and talk to his 
confessor. In the famous sitting of November, 1787, 
Orleans demanded, 'whether the meeting was for 
deliberating on the state of the country, or merely 
for registering the royal will ? ' The question was 
bold ; the whole assembly of courtiers had never 
heard such a sound before ; the poor king was all 
astonishment ; and the duke received a ministerial 
order to leave Paris, and go to Villers Coterets. 

But what duke of the old regime, or what French- 
man, of any, could bear exile from Paris ? Orleans 
solicited his recal, and even solicited the queen to 
obtain that recal. 

The plot now began to thicken. The crown was 
visibly slipping off the head of the unfortunate 
Louis. The Jacobins (at first) were ready to put it 
on the head of the duke. But his distinctions were 



58 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

to be of another kind. He was sent by the king 
into exile, on pretence of a mission to England. On 
his return, he found that the Jacobins had made up 
their minds — e There was to be no king in France.' 
The duke was expelled from Versailles. 

The infamous 6th of October, 1792, came ; and 
the king, queen, and the royal children, were dragged 
to Paris by a mob, who paraded the heads of the 
gardes du corps on pikes before the royal carriage. 
Lafayette was commander of the national guard of 
forty thousand men. At the head of this force, he 
ought to have stopped the mob of Paris from going 
to Versailles to insult the constitutional king. But 
this band of blood, drunkenness, and robbery, got the 
start of him by six hours. He then followed them, 
to rescue the king, and fortunately found that no- 
thing had yet been done. The national guard were 
quartered at night round the palace. Lafayette had 
an audience of the king, and solemnly assured him that 
he might retire to rest with the utmost security ; he 
would answer for it, and would guarantee the royal 
family against any attack by the mob. On this assur- 
ance the king ordered the exterior posts of the 
palace to be given up to the national guard, and went 
to sleep. Next morning the mob burst their way 
into the royal chambers, plundered the palace, stabbed 
the gardes du corps, and took the unfortunate 
monarch prisoner, to carry him as a felon to Paris. 
Then Lafayette put himself at the head of the na- 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 59 

tional guard again, and again followed the mob. All 
this might have been mere negligence or mere folly, 
but it was singularly disastrous in the end. 

Titles were next extinguished ; and the proud 
name of Orleans was sunk in the popular one of 
Egalit4. " Citizen Equality " was now a plebeian 
like the rest, the fellow of the citizen tinker and the 
citizen cobbler. His rabble compeers soon gave him a 
lesson in the rights of man. His estates followed 
his titles. Some of his family fled, and were glad to 
fly. His eldest son, then a boy, entered the revolu- 
tionary army. His own life was in perpetual hazard. 
On the 21st of January, 1793, Louis the Sixteenth 
was murdered on the scaffold. The duke was utterly 
undone from that hour. No man's career ever gave 
a more striking example of the miseries of ambition. 
The people hated him, as a remnant of that aristocracy 
on which they rejoiced to trample. The Jacobins, 
that troop of assassins which seemed congregated for 
the scourge of France, and the abhorrence of human 
nature, received him in triumph, kept him as a tool, 
and then cast him off as a victim. Robespierre, who 
mastered all his rivals simply by supremacy in blood- 
shed, at once marked him for the scaffold. 

The malice of this master-fiend turned even his 
sacrifices and services against this unhappy noble- 
man — ' He has two sons in our army in Belgium ; 
his influence is therefore dangerous. He has friends 
among our generals — he must be watched. He has 



GO LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

called himself Egalite — he cannot be sincere, he must 
wish to be a duke again ; his hypocrisy must be punish- 
ed, He has revolted to the people — it must have been 
with the idea of ascending a new throne. The republic 
allows of no throne. He must be extinguished.' The 
reasoning was irresistible, and the proud Philip of 
Orleans was cast into the dungeons of Marseilles. Trial 
rapidly followed ; he was declared guilty ; and death 
overtook him at the hands of a tribunal of assassins. 
He died firmly, as became a man of high name, and 
still retaining the single virtue that saves the criminal 
from utter contempt. The populace, for whose 
plaudits he had sacrificed all things, rewarded him 
by scoffs and hisses on his way to the scaffold. * They 
will applaud me yet,' said he, with a sudden sense 
of the giddiness of popular opinion. Yet he was 
mistaken, No man has since applauded him. No 
hand has planted the laurel, nor even the cypress, on 
his grave. 

Louis-Philippe, the present king of the French, 
was born on the 6th of October 1773, in the Palais 
Royal, eldest son of the late duke, and of Louisa 
Maria Adelaide, daughter of the Due de Bourbon 
Penthievre, admiral of France. In infancy his title 
was Due de Valois, but in 1782 he assumed that of 
Due de Chartres, on the death of his grandfather, 
the Duke of Orleans, from whom he had been called ; 
his father's name being Louis Philippe Joseph. He 
had two brothers, the Due de Montpensier, and the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 61 

Comte de Beaujolais, who both died of consumption 
about twenty years ago, and one sister, Adelaide 
Eugene Louisa, Princess of Orleans, born in 1777. 

The education of the Orleans family was for many 
years in the hands of Madame de Genlis, well known 
for her novels, her tracts on education, her scribbling 
at the age of eighty, and her figuring in the coteries 
of Paris. Her system of education was founded on 
the fanciful absurdities of Rousseau ; and the young 
duke was to be the new Emilius. A large part of this 
was foolish ; yet some was practical, and all was better 
than the wretched system of flattery, indolence and 
vice, in which the children of the French nobles were 
generally brought up. De Genlis removed the Or- 
leans children from the pestilent habits of Paris to 
the country, and there gave them the exercise, and in 
a considerable degree, the habits and pursuits of the 
peasantry. The boys were taught to live on simple 
food, to run, swim, even to climb trees, and walk on 
poles, for the purpose of accustoming them to help 
themselves in any case of personal hazard. The re- 
sults were, health, handsome proportions, and ac- 
tivity ; but the countess taught them more, for in 
her ideas of life she mingled, like all fools of both 
sexes, the glories of political bustle ; and she took the 
children to see the ruins of the Bastile. Doubtless 
every man of common sense on earth must have re- 
joiced at the fall of an infernal prison, in which the 
caprice of a minister, or the mistress of a minister, or 



62 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

of a clerk in office, or the mistress of a clerk in office, 
might shut up the most innocent man for life. The 
Bastile could not exist in any country, without de- 
grading the very nature of man, and making every 
individual, writer or not writer, tremble at every 
syllable he uttered. Still, it was a piece of indecorum 
and insolence in the governess of infants to lead them 
to a spectacle, which to their minds could recal 
only riot and butchery, and which was at that mo- 
ment a direct triumph over the unfortunate king and 
relative of their father. But philosophy in rash 
hands is the worst of follies, and at that hour all 
France was philosophe. 

But one display took place the year before, which 
was exempt from those charges. Some of the French 
convents were little more than schools for the young, 
or asylums for the old ; but in others, horrible cru- 
elties had been practised ; sometimes on monks and 
nuns, naturally weary of their condition, or dis- 
gusted with the power of their superiors ; sometimes 
on state prisoners, unfortunate beings who had, for 
something or for nothing, excited the suspicion of 
some tyrant governor of their province. The con- 
vent-prisons answered the double purpose of saving 
the government the trouble of keeping those wretched 
people in charge, and of securing them, till a misera- 
ble death ended their sufferings ; for no prison was 
so secure or so secret, as the vault of a convent. St. 
Michael, in Normandy, was among those sullen 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 68 

safeguards ; and there was in one of its caverns, a 
place of peculiar confinement for the unfortunates, 
whose crimes were obnoxious to the tastes of royalty. 
Public writers were especially criminal, and one of 
the tenants of this dungeon had been the publisher of 
a Dutch gazette ; who, owing no allegiance to Louis 
XIV., and probably feeling no more admiration than 
the royal libertine's own subjects felt for him, had. 
excited his displeasure by his paper. The publisher 
was seized on, hurried off to the St. Michael, and in 
the iron cage of this horrible dungeon he lay for 
fifteen years ! Well may Englishmen bless the bold- 
ness that rescued them from tender mercies like this ! 
"Well may they look with jealousy and indignation on 
all attempts to bring them to this barbarous condi- 
tion, and well may they deserve it if they suffer the 
slightest inroad on the press, which is, after all, the 
only sure guardian of their liberty, — surer and safer 
than all the formal guards of laws, which may be 
abrogated, in an hour ; of legislatures, which may be 
corrupted ; or of cabinets, which may dread the light, 
for the old reason, of the darkness of their deeds ! 
The French ministers naturally knew the friend of 
freedom and the foe of tyranny, and they fastened 
all the fangs and claws of power upon the press. 
Nations have the example — let them be wise by the 
warning. 

In the first efforts of the French revolution, the 
public mind was naturally turned on what had been 



64 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

especial horror for so many centuries ; and the secrets 
of those dreadful places were dragged to light. Ham- 
mer and hedge-stake in hand, the Norman peasantry- 
insisted on relieving the monks of St. Michael of the 
honour of being prison-keepers to the king ; and the 
dungeon was burst open for public inspection. Louis 
XVI. was a mild-tempered creature, and the new 
fashion at court was astonishment at the thickness of 
prison- walls, the damp of dungeons, and the rusty so- 
lidity of bolts and bars. The prisons now became a sort 
of public curiosity ; and among the rest, St. Michael 
was visited by the Count D'Artois, who was electri- 
fied at the sight of the iron cage ! gave a general 
command for its demolition, rode off, and left it as 
he found it. But it seems as if fate had determined, 
that the Duke of Orleans should always finish what 
Charles X. had left undone. The young 6l£ve of 
Madame de Genlis not merely commanded its destruc- 
tion, but stood by till it was completed. The nar- 
rative of this transaction, which was the parent of 
the fall of the Bastile, is still interesting. 

' The prior, followed by the monks, two carpen- 
ters, and the greater part of the prisoners, who, at 
our request, were allowed to be present, accompanied 
us to the spot containing this horrible cage. In order 
to reach it, we were obliged to traverse caverns so 
dark, that we had to use lighted flambeaux ; and 
after having descended many steps, we reached the 
cavern where stood this abominable cage, which was 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. f>5 

extremely small, and placed on ground so damp, that 
we could see the water running under it ! 

" I entered with a sentiment of horror and indig- 
nation, mingled with the pleasant feeling, that, at 
at least, thanks to my pupils, no unfortunate person 
would in future have to reflect with bitterness within 
its walls on his own calamities, and the cruelty of 
men. The young duke, with the most touching ex- 
pression, and with a force beyond his years, gave the 
first blow with his axe to the cage (which was of 
wood, strongly bound with iron.) After which the 
carpenters cut down the door, and removed some of 
the wood. I never witnessed any thing so interest- 
ing as the transports, the acclamations, and the 
applauses of the prisoners during the demolition. The 
old Swiss porter alone shewed signs of grief, which 
the prior explained, by saying, he regretted the cage, 
because he made money by shewing it to strangers. 
The duke immediately gave him ten louis ; saying, 
that, for the future, instead of shewing the cage to 
travellers, he should have to point out the place 
where it stood, and that surely would be more agree- 
able to them.' " So says Madame de Genlis, and the 
anecdote does credit to the feelings and the under- 
standing of her clever pupil. 

There are other traits of good feeling told of him 
at subsequent periods. When the decree of the 
National Assembly put an end to the privileges of 
eldership, the little Due de Chartres turned round to 



(J(j LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

his brother Montpensier, and declared " his delight 
that there would be no longer any distinction between 
them." Yet this was French, and, perhaps argued 
rather too keen a sense of his previous superiority. 
But the next anecdote is of the country of every 
honest and high-minded man. At the age of seven- 
teen he was sent for to Paris by his father, and an 
establishment was given to him. His time of life 
was a tempting one, and Paris was a tempting place, 
for such a time. But the boy felt that he had still 
something to learn, and he made regular visits, 
as a pupil, to the family school in the country. He, 
yet more to his honour, made the resolution of laying 
by his pocket-money till he was of age, and appro- 
priating it to charitable and public purposes. 

The Due de Chartres was now to mingle in the 
stirring life of the world. The Jacobins were the 
chief partizans of his father, and by that father's 
command he became a member of the Jacobin Club. 
But he was happily called from the contact of those 
blasphemers and murderers, to scenes where his vir- 
tues would not be so hazardous to himself. In 1790 
he was sent to join his regiment, quartered in Ven- 
dome. He found the populace slaying the priests, 
and his first exploit was to save one of those unfor- 
tunate men ; his next was to jump into the river to 
rescue a custom-house officer from drowning. His 
activity could not have exercised itself on two more 
obnoxious classes. For the priest he got nothing, 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 67 

but the city of Vendome gave him a civic crown for 
the exciseman ! 

In 1792, France offered the most irresistible warning 
ever given to the world, of the evil spirit of a nation 
trained by religious ignorance, and its perpetual 
associate, Despotism ! It was in a blaze. Its only 
creed an abolition of all belief in a soul, in the prin- 
ciples of truth, honour, or morality, or in a God ; 
its only law the will of a populace of cut-throats ; 
and its only freedom the liberty to murder every- 
body : — the delight of the legislature and the popu- 
lace alike being the general clearance of the prisons, 
the streets, and the houses, by the pike, the grape-shot, 
and the guillotine ; France declaring herself at war with 
all the world, until all the world was compelled to make 
war on France ; every day marked by a massacre 
in Paris, or in the provinces ; a battle on the frontier, 
or a new burst of horrible retaliatory rage in Vendee ; 
The whole aspect of that immense country one cloud 
of conflagration and slaughter ; France mangled in 
every limb, — a whole nation bleeding at every pore. 

The Due de Chartres served his first campaign, 
under Biron in 1792, in the army of the north, 
where he was in several general actions, and com- 
manded a brigade of cavalry. Under Luckner and 
Dumouriez he fought against the Prussian invasion, 
and on the famous 6th of November, 1792, the day 
of Gemappe, he is said to have decided the battle. 
The French had found the Austrian army strongly 

F 2 



68 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

intrenched on the heights of Gemappe. But Du- 
mouriez, as he afterwards declared, had no alterna- 
tive but to attack them, for he had no bread ; and 
he gave one of his columns to the Due de Chartres, 
who rushed upon the lines. The Austrians repulsed 
the first charge, and drove back the column which 
had led the centre attack, Dumouriez thought that 
all was lost, and was galloping across the field in 
utter perplexity, when he met an aide-de-camp sent 
to give him news of victory. The Due de Char- 
tres had rallied his young troops, put himself at the 
head of a regiment, and moving forward, burst into 
theAustrian lines. All was now confusion, the charge 
decided the battle, and the battle decided the 
fate of the Austrian dominion in Flanders. The 
enemy lost upwards of six thousand in killed, 
wounded, and prisoners, and Dumouriez instantly 
overran the whole of Belgium. 

But Dumouriez, that original and extraordinary 
soldier, who first taught the French Republicans how 
to fight, and whose genius was the only one that 
might have anticipated the splendour of Napoleon's 
triumphs, was himself soon forced to acknowledge 
the uncertainty of military fortune. In February 
1793, at the battle of Nerwinde, he was utterly de- 
feated. With the Republic, misfortune was always 
a crime, and the general was summoned to Paris to 
give an account of himself. This was notoriously but 
a summons to have his head cut off. He knew the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. <>i) 

Republic, and he contrived to elude the command. 
He next revolved the idea of overthrowing his 
masters in their turn ; he was even said to have con- 
ceived the idea of placing the Due de Chartres on the 
throne. But he found that his army would not follow 
him. Commissioners from Paris suddenly arrived 
to seize the refractory general. By a last instance of 
dexterity, he turned the tables on the commissioners, 
cleverly seized them, sent them as an introduction 
for himself to the Austrian camp, and galloped after 
them, with the young duke at his side. The seizure 
of those commissioners was of service to others than 
himself, for they were afterwards exchanged for the 
Dauphiness, the present Duchess of Angouleme, 
then in prison in Paris. 

The Duke had fled ; on the certain knowledge that 
an order for his arrest had been issued in Paris. But 
though a fugitive by necessity, he unhesitatingly refu- 
sed to serve against France. The Prince of Coburg, 
the Austrian general, offered him the command of a 
division as lieutenant-general. This he declined; 
and, proscribed by his country, separated from all 
his usual means of income, and with nothing but 
his education, his activity, and his honesty, he went 
forth, to make his way through the world. 

Such are the vicissitudes from which at times no 
rank is exempted. But the Duke felt more than 
the ordinary aggravations of a fall from the most 
splendid fortune. He was in terror for every mem- 



70 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

ber of his family. His father and his two brothers were 
in the dungeons of the committee of public safety ; 
dungeons from which there was scarcely an instance 
of liberation, and from which his father was taken 
but to die. His mother and sister had fled from 
France, and he had no intelligence of them, except 
that they were separated. He was personally ob- 
noxious to the emigrants, from his republican ser- 
vices ; and the republicans would have seen him, only 
to send him to the guillotine. In this emergency he 
made his escape into Switzerland. It seems unfortu- 
nate that he did not come to England, where he 
would have been secure, and highly received. But 
probably he might have been reluctant to meet the 
multitude of emigrants here ; and, probably too, his 
proud spirit would have been unwilling, either to 
appear as a pensioner on the country, or to take the 
humble means which he must have found necessary 
for independence. 

In Switzerland he had the satisfaction of finding 
his sister, whom he placed in the convent ofBrem- 
garten. But, as soon as his presence was known, 
he was persecuted, and obliged to fly to the Alps from 
the pursuit of Robespierre. During four months 
which he passed in this wild country, he and his valet 
lived on thirty sous (Is. 3d.) a day. At length; even 
this failed ; he was obliged to dismiss his valet, and 
assuming the name of M. Corby, he offered himself 
as teacher of mathematics at the college of the 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 71 

Orisons at Coire. There he subsisted for eight 
months. The death of Robespierre, in 1794, made 
this retirement unnecessary. He then received some 
money from France, and hired a cottage in a Swiss 
village. He next set out on a tour through the 
north, and roved as far as Lapland ! 

In an account by Tweddell, the traveller, of his 
visit to the Duke, in Switzerland, he says : — 

1 The Duke is at present determined to proceed to 
North America, to enjoy that liberty for which he 
has suffered so much. There, in the midst of forests, 
he will complete an education so auspiciously com- 
menced by adversity. 1 doubt not that he will still 
display that unaffected magnanimity which has hith- 
erto rendered him superior to good and to bad for- 
tune. The same greatness of soul has marked him 
throughout. A prince, at sixteen, without the least 
touch of pride ; at seventeen, a general rallying his 
division three times under the fire of Gemappe ; a 
professor of Geometry at twenty, as competent as if 
he had devoted to it long years of study ; and in each 
condition, as if he had been born to fulfil its duties. 
To conclude, I cannot give you a better idea of the 
union of strength and moderation in his character, 
than by a copy of a letter which he wrote a few days 
ago to an American, who had offered him some waste 
lands to clear. " I am heartily disposed to labour 
for the acquisition of an independence. Misfortune 
•has smitten, but, thank God, it has not prostrated me. 



72 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

More than happy in my misfortunes, that youth pre- 
vented the formation of habits difficult to break 
through, and that prosperity was snatched from 
me before I could either use or abuse it.' 

A new reason was soon added to this manly pro- 
pensity to struggle for himself in the world. The 
Directory of France, fearing the return of so popular 
a branch of the royal family, had offered to liberate 
his brothers on condition of his going to America. 
He instantly embraced the proposal. The compact 
was kept by the Directory, and the duke and his two 
brothers, to whom he was strongly attached, met in 
Philadelphia, in 1797. After a long tour through 
the lakes and forests, he passed down the Mississippi, 
and remained at the Havannah a year and a half, 
waiting the king of Spain's permission, to return and 
see his mother. But the permission never came. He 
then visited the Duke of Kent at Halifax, and by his 
advice sailed for England. Again he sailed for 
Spain, but was not suffered to land. He returned 
to England, and was introduced by the Count 
D'Artois to Louis X VIII. He then took a house at 
Twickenham ; where he lost his brother, the Due de 
Montpensier, by a consumption. His brother, Beau- 
jolais, was seized with the same disease, and the 
duke took him to Malta for change of climate ; but, 
there he, too, unfortunately died. 

The history of this distinguished man almost 
exceeds the wanderings of romance. In 1809 he 



LOUIS PHILIPPE. 73 

went to Sicily, on a visit to the court. Leopold, the 
king's second son, had entertained the idea of being 
chosen head of the Spanish nation, in the absence of 
their king ; and he sailed with the duke for Gibraltar ; 
but the governor, justly conceiving that a Sicilian 
prince was not the proper head for a free insurrec- 
tion, refused to suffer the royal adventurer to land. 
The design perished on the spot. 

On his return to England he found his sister there, 
and they sailed together to meet their mother, who had 
escaped from Spain, and the French army, to Port Ma- 
hon. With them he returned to Sicily, where he mar- 
ried a daughter of the king, Ferdinand IV. in 1809. 
He now remained four years in Sicily, in the midst of 
hazard and insurrection. In 1810, the Spaniards 
offered him a military command in Catalonia ; but 
when he arrived there, he found that no command 
was provided ; the English general probably thinking 
that the duke's presence might be some impediment 
to more national objects. He was even refused ad- 
mission at Cadiz, and again returned to Sicily. 

On the Bourbon restoration he came to Paris, and 
was made colonel-general of hussars. On Napoleon's 
landing, in March 1815, the Duke went to Lyons, to 
act with the Count d'Artois ; but the troops revolted, 
and he returned to Paris. He was then sent to 
command in the north, but there too the troops 
revolted — he instantly made his decision, gave up 
the command to Mortier, and honourably followed 



74 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

the king on his way into Belgium. In 1816 he 
returned with his family from England, and resided 
in Paris, in a state of cool distance with the court, 
but usefully employing his vast and accumulating 
revenue, and wisely and gracefully patronizing public 
works and literature. 

The story of the celebrated days of July is not 
now to be detailed. On the 29th the tri-coloured flag 
was replaced on the Tuilleries — on the 81st the king 
abdicated, and on the 17th of August he arrived in 
England. On the 7th of August the Duke of Orleans 
had been declared monarch, by the Chamber of 
Deputies, by the style of ' Louis Philippe the First, 
king of the French.' To this splendid elevation has 
reached one of the most perilous, diversified, and 
manly courses of life that history records. Every 
man who loves personal honour, filial duty, and 
patriotic wisdom, will be in favour of this elevation ; 
and all will indulge the hope that this amiable and 
able individual has come to the close of his vicissi- 
tudes, and that no cloud may darken the brightness 
of his proud and fortunate day. 



V. 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE IN 1829, 



Written in 1829. 
England, by a course of valour exerted in a righ- 
teous cause, by counsels manly and wise, by a 
national spirit unequalled for the love of freedom, 
for energy, and for generosity, and lastly and chiefly, 
by the possession of the purest form of the purest 
religion, stands at this hour in the foremost place of 
the civilized world. 

Where is her rival now to be found ? Russia, the 
only power whose influence might have seemed to 
menace her supremacy, has been taught in a single 
campaign, the feebleness of an empire whose strength 
is founded upon the brute force of armies. That she 
has been taught this lesson, no lover of the peace of 
Europe, or the true interests of mankind, can regret. 
Wherever grasping and insolent ambition receives its 
chastisement, a great good is done to the cause of 
justice ; and wherever the true weakness and fragility 
of despotism can be contrasted with the intrinsic and 
inexhaustible vigour of a government of freedom, 
there human rights have made a progress, and the 



76 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

victory is gained for human nature. Whether the 
next Russian campaign will be more successful than 
that which has now closed in such signal disgrace to 
the ostentatious and unjustifiable spirit of aggression, 
which urged the emperor into the Turkish war ; or 
whether the first campaign shall be the last, is of no 
importance to the main question. The Russians 
have been defeated, and that too under the most 
humiliating circumstances, — not at the close of a long 
struggle, where their troops' discipline and spirit 
might be supposed to be equally broken down ; but 
with the most completely equipped army that the 
empire ever sent into the field ; with all the 
advantages of discipline in the troops, and ex- 
perience in the generals ; even with a national and 
superstitious enthusiasm, to stimulate them to efforts 
beyond the exploits of soldiership, and with the 
whole temptation of the opulence of European and 
Asiatic Turkey to reward their easy march over the 
bodies of the enemy. 

In this struggle too they had not to contend with 
the organized and iron power of the great European 
kingdoms ; Austrian discipline, French activity, and 
British courage, were not to turn the bayonets of the 
grenadier-army of " all the Russias." Nicholas was 
to march against a rabble, almost entirely new to the 
field, ill-equipped, ill-officered, and stubbornly ad- 
verse to all adoption of the improvements of modern 
war. The personal bravery of the Turk was ac- 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 77 

knowledged, but superior tactics make personal bra- 
very in the enemy rather a snare, than an element 
of success. Victory was secure ! 

Yet three months of a campaign against half naked 
barbarians and mouldering walls, were enough to 
extinguish the pride of Russian ambition. The 
veterans of the north fled before the peasantry of 
Asia ; discipline gave way before brave disorder ; and 
fifty thousand Russian corpses, three armies utterly 
dismantled, enormous financial losses, and the tar- 
nished military name, that Russia had expended her 
blood for a century to purchase, are the monuments 
of her Turkish war. 

Russia is still a great empire, with great means of 
good or evil. But the secret of her weak place has 
been betrayed by herself. To invasion she may be 
inexpugnable. She may present a barrier of ada- 
mant in the severity of her climate, the barren im- 
mensity of her dominions, and the sullen resistance 
of her people ; but beyond her borders she is feeble ; 
like her own north wind, her force is in her native 
region: it decays in its descent into Europe, and 
finally softens and sinks away. As a menacer of 
England, we need have no substantial fear of Russia. 
We may hear again of armed neutralities ; of 
North-Sea Coalitions ; or of the March to India ; 
those showy charlatanries with which the adroitness 
of Catherine and Alexander contrived at once to 
occupy the eyes of European statesmen, and conceal 



78 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

the actual weakness of their empire ? We have 
a chain upon the neck of Russia, which we shall 
leave in the hands of the Turk ; and which, at the 
first growlings from the northern den, we shall teach 
him how to tighten. But peace with all, and peace 
among all, is the golden rule of England. Every shot 
fired in Europe, is a shot virtually fired against her ; 
and as injury to her would be injury to every corner 
of the earth where man is above the beast of the 
field : so is her supremacy the noblest promise and 
pledge of strength, knowledge, and happiness, to the 
circle of the globe. 

This knowledge of the feebleness of Russia beyond 
her own frontier, may be followed by lessons still 
more important. It ought to furnish a great 
warning of the actual weakness of the despotic 
form of government. The leading cabinets may be 
made awake to the living evidence, that the 
rigid authority, to which they sacrifice the incal- 
culable benefits of national freedom, is not worth 
the price ; that while it is directly injurious to the 
mighty nerve to be found in commerce, knowledge, 
manly interprise, and that general magnitude and 
force of the human mind, which can grow up only 
where man is master of himself; the external power 
of the nation is not the more exempt from the severest 
casualties: that this hard and close bondage of a 
nation, this forcing the national frame into perpetual 
armour, is no preservative against defeat ; and that 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 79 

the wisest plan would be to hang up this memorial of 
the times of feudality and barbarism among the 
reliques of years in the grave, beat the sword into 
the ploughshare, and leave man to follow the open 
and generous impulses of genius and nature. 

All the other leading European states are now either 
in close alliance with us, or too keenly busied with 
their own difficulties, to dare the chance of English 
war. France may have learned by the wisdom of 
suffering, the infinite importance of peace with a 
country to which all her coasts are open, yet which. 
is totally inaccessible to her arms ; whose fleets can, 
at a word, sweep her commerce from the ocean, shut 
up her ports, and cut off her intercourse with her 
colonies ; and which, when the struggle comes 
at last on the land, can show that the British 
soldier is made of the same materials as the British 
sailor. 

Spain and Portugal are too eagerly employed in 
dissensions at home to think of hostilities. The monks 
are the masters of both : the monks may hate the 
freedom, the religion, and the knowledge of England ; 
and desperately might they show their hate, if they 
dared. But their daggers are for other breasts ; the 
spirit of jacobinism keeps the spirit of monkery in 
alarms too anxious for foreign mischief. One fiend 
has been called up, to contronl the malice of an- 
other. They are fit antagonists, and will rend each 
other with fang and talon, until their work is done, 



80 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

and the Peninsula is sunk into the final degradation 
of a wilderness scattered over with a few superstitious 
slaves ; or startles the world by the brief and bloody 
supremacy of a jacobin empire. 

Austria lies in that massive tranquillity which has 
characterized the reign of the house of Hapsburg. 
But of all the continental states, she is the most 
essentially bound to the alliance of England ; by her 
position in the midst of the great military powers ; 
by the absence of any source of rival ambition ; and 
by the habits of old connexion, and combined strug- 
gle against Napoleon. She has all the strength of 
passive power ; her military position is impregnable, 
unless betrayed by negligence or imbecility; her 
troops are brave, and she can recruit her armies from 
an immense extent of territory filled with a hardy 
population. 

There has not been a moment since the close of the 
revolutionary war, when the politician would be 
entitled to calculate more securely upon the general 
peace of Europe. Even the late disturbances of the 
military states have only assisted this probability. 
If the interval since the fall of Napoleon has been 
long enough for a generation to start into public 
life, who knew nothing of the miseries of war ; and 
if, in every continental nation, there is a- rapidly 
rising tendency to recommence the scene, where- 
on their fathers had suffered so deeply ; yet, 
as if for the express purpose of checking this 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 81 

hazardous tendency, there is scarcely an European 
nation which has not, within a short period, had a 
trial of war> not sufficient to draw their blood fatally, 
yet more than enough to teach them the misery that 
can be inflicted by the sword. 

Yet we cannot forget the precarious nature of all 
that depends upon human will. The principle of 
aggrandizement is like the principle of Evil ; it never 
sleeps, it never pauses, it is perpetually on the wing, 
seeking on what throne it may stoop, and fill the 
bosom of the sitter there with temptation. Cove- 
tousness has been pronounced, on the highest autho- 
rity, to be the idolatry of man. Aggrandizement is 
the idolatry of thrones. Europe has seen, in the rise 
and fall of the French empire, with what fearful cere- 
monial the Moloch may be worshipped, even in an 
age which calls itself enlightened ; what multitudes 
must pass through the flame ; what blood of the 
princely and the brave, and even of the helpless and 
the young, must be poured out on that terrible altar. 
Yet the moral of the consummation may be forgot- 
ten. The blasting of the chief worshipper by the 
flame which he himself had kindled, the tremend- 
ous demand of blood for blood uttered against France, 
may no sooner have passed away from the general 
eye and ear; than some frenzied populace or furious 
chieftain will rush to rebuild the altar, and fill it 
with new and even more consuming fires. 

Still there is that additional security against Euro- 



82 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

pean war, which is to be found in interior disturbance. 
Insurrection is in the bowels of every kingdom of 
Europe. The most formidable enemies of the Spanish 
and Portuguese thrones are notoriously active within 
their own realms; sometimes defying them in the 
field, but perpetually menacing the royal authority. 
In France, the spirit of disturbance lives, in the two- 
fold shape of the Jacobin and the Jesuit ; and the 
slightest relaxation of royal vigilance might let 
loose civil war through the land. In Belgium, 
one half of the population is suspicious of the 
other, and the whole power of government is em- 
ployed in restraining the mutual violences of super- 
stition and fanaticism. In Prussia, the whole mili- 
tary strength of the crown is not too strong for the 
revolutionary opinions. Even in the heavy quietude 
of the Austrian monarchy, jacobinism, and the repug- 
nance of newly-conquered countries to a master of a 
strange speech and soil, are felt to be demands on all 
the suspicion of the cabinet ; the revolutionary im- 
pulses of the north of Germany have made their way 
even into the lazy provinces of the Danube ; the Hun- 
garian nobility, too, molest Austria with their old 
demands of privilege ; and the keeping of the Italian 
conquests is a perpetual business of the prison and 
the sabre. The Greek revolt plagues the Otto- 
man with the common trouble of European thrones. 
Polish disaffection, and even conspiracy to an enor- 
mous extent in the Russian army, exercise the fears 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 83 

of the Emperor, and teacli him, if he is to be 
taught by experience, the necessity of applying his 
vigour to the correction of evils at home. Whether 
those extraordinary tendencies to popular disturbance 
are to be looked on as the ' ground swell,' the last 
heavings of that tempest which wrecked so many 
European thrones ; or as that ominous and instinc- 
tive rising of the great deep of society, which portends 
the final and tenfold storm ; its present operation must 
be, to retard the hostilities of the monarchs of Europe, 
to assist the efforts of England for general peace, and 
to give her time to perfect those noble plans of 
national and European amelioration, for which she 
seems to have been raised by the especial hand of 
heaven. 

We have seen the singular concurrence of what 
the world calls accident, in giving England a para- 
mount influence abroad. We shall call it by a loftier 
and more cheering name ; and exult in the proof, that 
to nations strenuous in well-doing, is extended the 
same protection which has been promised to the 
virtuous among men. By this high protection, 
England, one of the smallest territories in Europe, 
has been raised into an eminence never equalled by 
the greatest ; has been made the sovereign of realms, 
to which the mightiest of the European kingdoms 
would be but a province ; has become the mother of 
colonies which already assume the magnitude of em- 
pires ; has planted her arts, her laws, her literature, 
g 2 



84 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

and her religion, in the uttermost parts of the earth ; 
and at this hour, even in the midst of the strifes 
and jealousies of Europe, is appealed to as the great 
arbiter, by whose will contending nations are to 
abide ; the great Ally, whose friendship is to be safety, 
as her hostility is to be subversion ; the irresistible 
strength which is to overwhelm the insolence of the 
triumphant, and the magnanimous protection which 
is to give recovery to the undone. 

But to look to the course of our domestic policy ; 
we are persuaded that there too evil has been palpably 
controlled into good, and that a proud and rapid pro- 
gress of amelioration has been preparing, in the midst 
of what seemed to be but a choice of calamities. 

Scarcely more than two years ago, the nation was 
in the hands of Lord Liverpool, a minister whose 
policy was — to govern on any terms that might avoid a 
collision of parties. Lord Liverpool's intentions were 
sincere, but his habits of life had made the retention 
of office a part of his being ; and for that retention, 
he unconsciously sacrificed the spirit of the con- 
stitution. The system of governing by a divided 
cabinet was his favourite and fatal secret ; and the 
confidence reposed in his moderation might have 
made us regardless of the evils of his policy, until 
the bulwarks of the national faith and freedom had 
been irremediably broken away. A cabinet in which 
no one leading measure could have been resolved on, 
without parings-down of principle on both sides of 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 85 

the council-table ; would have been at last trained 
to the discovery, that all principles were the legi- 
timate subject of barter. 

Canning's rise to the premiership suddenly and irre- 
sistibly showed the perniciousness of this folly. The 
new minister had found the cabinet following its 
separate styles of thinking on the Popish question ; 
he resolved that they should try how far separate 
styles of thinking could be adopted on all the 
maxims of the constitution, and with a stroke of the 
pen he made one half of the cabinet Whig ! The 
nation cried out against the man, and the measure ; 
and idly lamented the blindfold integrity of Lord 
Liverpool. But his wily successor was playing the 
involuntary patriot. He showed the true tendency 
of the system ; by a cabinet in which, not merely no 
act could pass without mutual concession, but no act 
whatever could pass ! Those fellow-advisers for their 
country's good, had but one principle in common, 
that of keeping their situations in defiance of public 
disdain. All the great questions were amicably flung 
under the table ; all the mouths of council were pad- 
locked by mutual consent ; the whole dexterity of this 
amphibious cabinet was exhausted on accordant con- 
trivances for doing nothing. The Romish Question, 
the Test Act, the Corn Question, the Parliamentary 
Reform, the Finance Question, all were alike buried 
in the equivocal bosoms of this heteroclite ministry. 
It was the deprecated power of George Canning that 



86 ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

did the state this service. It was he who shewed, to 
demonstration, that a divided cabinet must degenerate 
into a public nuisance. But his experiment was sud- 
denly checked ; the involuntary patriot passed into 
the tomb ; and it was left for others to mature public 
men into that ripeness of conciliation, which disclaimed 
the folly of standing at arm's length, when they might 
approximate, and pick the nation's pocket toge- 
ther. Peace be to his grave. His life was of use, if 
it gave us but one lesson, — never to trust the 
professions of a man struggling his way up to 
office ; and never to decide on the panegyric, until 
it can be rectified by the epitaph, of a statesman. 
Canning was one of those examples, not unfre- 
quent in public life, of powers made useless by 
the fault of their position. Under the guidance of 
Pitt he was triumphant. He was a capital gene- 
ral of division, but a bad commander-in-chief. He 
had admirable qualities for parliament, brilliant 
promptitude, dextrous ridicule, and wit at once pun- 
gent and playful. His genius was diamond-like ; 
wherever it turned it shone, wherever it caught the 
light it sparkled ; but, like the diamond, its light 
was not its own. No stronger contrast could exist 
than between his powers, and the bold and various 
flashings of Fox, or the lofty and unwearied splendour 
of Pitt. But his animation, his elegance, and the 
occasional dignity of his conceptions in debate, made 
him the delight of the House. He found a subtle 



ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 87 

and strong antagonist in Brougham. But Canning's 
polished shafts were unerring — it was the combat of 
Apollo and the Python. 

An undefinable Cabinet followed, — a government 
of invalids past their labour, and recruits not come to 
their age of service ; of minds long laid up in congenial 
obscurity, and minds not arrived at years of dis- 
cretion. Its activity consisted in a life of post-chaises 
between London and Windsor, to inquire whether it 
was in or out ; its deliberation in the peace-making of 
two clerks ; and its title to the national gratitude in 
the speedy discovery that it knew nothing about the 
national business, and that it was high time for it to 
withdraw. 

The lesson of the divided cabinet had now been 
fully given. The Duke of Wellington assumed the 
premiership. Accustomed to the course of things, he 
left the fools to expose their own folly, and the 
knaves to out-wit themselves. The sudden unpopu- 
larity of the tribe justified his expectations, almost 
before they were pronounced. Let him not forget 
the lesson wrought for his strength by the weakness 
of his predecessors. Let him purify his cabinet, and 
the nation, already rejoicing, shall yet more rejoice, 
in the casualties that prepared the way for the supre- 
macy of a great minister. 

The Duke comes into office with memorable ad- 
vantages. His entry is less the ordinary advance of 
a minister to power, than of a national chief, forced 



8S ENGLAND AND EUROPE. 

forward by the national exultation. His march is 
triumphal, and his chariot-wheels have been dragged 
along by the hands of the people. 

Yet, what is the value of speculation on subjects 
so fluctuating as the fate of ministers ? The average 
duration of British Cabinets, since the beginning of 
the reign of George the Third, has been exactly 
three years and a half! And, by a curious singu- 
larity, the boldest has always been the most suddenly 
defeated, the strongest the most rapidly burst asun- 
der, and the most brilliant the most totally extin- 
guished. Is this contradiction of the course of nature 
inherent in politics ? Is its soil a volcanic crust, able 
to sustain nothing massive? Is public life but a 
perpetual earthquake, where the solid and the stately 
precipitate their own fall, and where nothing stands, 
but the hovel, which sways to the shock, and whose 
standing or falling is alike forgotten. 



VI. 

THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 



Written in 1830. 
If the Irish Church is to be overthrown, the Irish 
state must follow it. If the influence which the Pro- 
testant clergy exercise upon the civilization of the 
country were to be withdrawn, three-fourths of Ire- 
land would sink into barbarism ; if the connection 
which their presence upholds between Irish feeling 
and English government were to be dissolved, the 
islands would be divided from that hour ; an instant 
rebellion would break the bond ; followed by a revo- 
lution, which would set up a tyranny ; and both fol- 
lowed by a war, in which Ireland would be the field 
of battle. 

For what horrors must the mind be prepared, that 
can contemplate such a struggle ! What utter de- 
vastation of the present means and future powers of 
Ireland must be wrought, between the mad rebellion 
of the people and the angry vengeance of England ; 
how tremendously must the evil be aggravated 
by the interference of hostile Europe, an interference 
which would inevitably be urged with all the subtlety 



90 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

of Jesuitism, and all the fury of ambition ! The island 
must be covered with ruin ; population must perish ; 
production must be extinguished over the face of the 
land ; and unless England should be crushed by the 
united conspiracy, Ireland must be held to her 
allegiance in all future time, only by the chain. 

We feel no surprise that the church establish- 
ment should be insulted by that multitude of dis- 
puters, who habitually molest society. Fools will 
argue though they cannot reason, and dictate though 
they cannot learn. The haranguer is generally some 
unlucky and obscure struggler in the lower walks of 
some profession. One sees himself surpassed on all 
sides, and salves his wounded vanity by his ignorant 
slander. Another feels himself scorned in the 
general intercourses of intelligent society, and tries 
to revenge the scorn by a reptile hatred of all that 
dignifies public and private life. The thwarted 
hungerer for office takes up the miserable common- 
places of politics : and is the radical. The idle scio- 
list, in the most repulsive ignorance of divine things, 
takes up the miserable common-places against reli- 
gion ; and is the infidel. Faction canvassing the 
meanest sources of gain, is outrageous at the estab- 
lished revenues of every institution alike in church 
and state ; and as nothing but the utter subversion 
of the country can give it a chance of plunder, it 
clamours for that subversion, as the only hope of 
safety to the land. 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 91 

With men of this class, it is but waste of words, 
to reason. Their vulgarity and virulence are beyond 
all conviction; they must be left to their natural 
career ; fortunate only if their poltroonery contents 
them with poisoning the minds of fools, without 
bringing themselves to the scaffold by the attempt 
to realize their principles. But, to those who desire 
to judge of things by their merits ; the grounds 
for advocating an establishment of religion are 
as palpable as those for advocating a civil govern- 
ment. 

Christianity is a system of the highest truths, es- 
sential to the highest purposes of man. It retains 
the most disturbing feelings of our nature in the 
path of duty : — It animates the noblest labours of 
personal and public virtue : — It diffuses cheerfulness 
through the deepest scenes of an anxious life : — 
While ennobling the highest human nature by giving 
it the noblest of all motives, the love and honour 
of a being who comprehends within himself all 
power, sanctity, and wisdom ; it raises the humblest 
to the level of the loftiest, by that holy equality 
which makes no distinction beyond the grave, but 
the distinction of virtue. Superior to the world, 
yet made for man, it girds us up for the most sublime 
sacrifices in the cause of human nature, by display- 
ing alike the secure happiness of a life employed 
in the service of God ; the nothingness of those 
honours which may be earned by successful crime ; 



92 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

and the solid splendour of that praise which comes 
from the eternal source of glory. 

But all knowledge requires a teacher, and all 
knowledge that is to be permanent, must be sustained 
by a succession of teachers. If religion is to be im- 
pressed upon the people, it must be by men ap- 
pointed and educated for the purpose of impressing 
it. There must be a clergy. 

But if the religion of a nation is to be a system 
of principles, not a vague compilation of fugitive 
theories, there must be some standard, some authen- 
tic form of doctrine ; something beyond the rambling 
fancy of every enthusiast, who undertakes to lead 
the popular mind. We must not see in the pulpit 
of to-day a man who contradicts all that w T as said by 
the man of yesterday, and is as sure to have his doc- 
trine contradicted by the man of to-morrow. Thus 
there must be a summary of belief : a liturgy, places 
of worship, men appointed to preserve the decorum of 
that worship, to sustain its offices, and to propagate 
its truths ; or the whole falls to the ground. But, to 
keep up this succession, there must be some settled 
inducement for parents to devote their sons to the 
church, some remuneration for the expense of train- 
ing, and some security that the remuneration will 
not fail, if the service be done. Thus, we must have 
a clergy, colleges for their instruction, livings for 
their support, and a permanent right in their pos- 
sessions, protected by society. 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 98 

If we would have our children initiated into Chris- 
tianity by the rite commanded by its Divine Teacher ; 
or if we would make the union of the sexes the sacred 
bond that it must be made, to avoid the most fatal 
evils to the human race ; we must have baptisms and 
marriages, and ministers to perform them both. If 
we would offer the natural respect to the dead, whom 
we honoured and loved in life ; or if we look upon 
the body, which is yet to rise and be glorified, as 
worthy of more consideration than the body of a wild 
beast ; we must have ministers to perform the decent 
ceremonial of the grave. But, for all those offices, 
and for more than those, we must have a clergy. 

But the outcry of the radical and the atheist is, 
that the clergy have usurped too large a portion of 
the property of the state ; that their payment is inju- 
rious to public prosperity ; and that the state has a 
right to modify, diminish, or take away the pro- 
perty altogether. Every one of those assertions is 
provable to be a prejudice, a libel, or an absurdity. 

In the first place — the revenues of the establishment 
are not paid by the people. The title of the esta- 
blishment to its revenues is older than that of any 
other property in the empire. Those revenues were 
not taken from any living man's estate, for they have 
subsisted for ages previous to the existence of those 
estates ; and they have existed by the most natural 
and intelligible of all rights, the right of private own- 
ership to dispose of its property. This right is more 



94 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

sacred than the power of the nation to dispose of pro- 
perty, because that process implies violence, or revo- 
lution ; and what one revolution may do, another may 
be entitled to undo. It is more sacred than the power 
of kings to confer property, because that power may 
often be the mere work of tyranny. Thus the right 
of the church to its possessions is the most ancient, 
simple, and solid of all ; — the right of the individual 
who has acquired property, to dispose of it according 
to his own good will. 

The first edifice assigned for Christianity in Eng- 
land was in Canterbury, the gift of Ethelbert, the 
king of Kent, in the sixth century. As the people 
were still heathens, the priests who had come with 
Austin, travelled through Ethelbert's kingdom, 
preaching Christianity. The first assemblages of the 
converts were in cottages. When those assemblages 
became too numerous for the cottages ; regular, though 
rude places of worship, called prayer-houses, or 
oratories, were appointed for the service. Still, the 
service was only occasional; the preacher was an 
itinerant missionary ; and the population was, in a 
great measure, destitute of religious instruction. 

But Christianity made rapid progress ; the Saxon 
chieftains were successively led to listen to divine 
truth, and they naturally desired to provide for the reli- 
gious instruction of their vassals. Yet the oratories 
were few and mean ; the mother church, or cathedral, 
was distant ; and they erected churches on their own 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 95 

lands, and fixed a permanent minister of religion in 
each church, for the perpetual maintenance of its 
worship ; endowing him generally with a portion of 
land, and besides, in all instances, with that portion 
of the products of the estate which we now call tithes. 
This was the general condition of church property 
before the conquest. 

The Norman invasion extended the royal system of 
granting land to the great officers and feudatories of 
the crown ; and they, in their turn, repaid the services 
of their chief retainers by minor grants. A great 
number of those possessors, each desiring to have 
for his vassals and tenantry the advantages of 
church service, and the residence of a clergyman upon 
his estate ; erected churches, and placed clergy upon 
their property. Thus gradually arose the distribution 
of livings and churches ; the boundaries of the estate 
being in general the boundaries of the parish, and the 
services of the priest being appropriated to the par- 
ticular estate, and of course paid out of the proceeds 
of the property settled for his maintenance by the 
owner. It is impossible that any right can be more 
natural or justifiable than that of a maintenance 
derived in this manner. It was not forced from the 
owner : it was not taken from either the property of 
the public, nor of any unwilling individual. The 
lord of the estate felt the necessity for having religious 
service on his land ; to have that advantage he set 
apart a regular salary for its provision ; and to continue 



96 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

that advantage to his posterity, he made that provi- 
sion permanent to all time. 

That this was the origin of our tithes and glebes is 
unquestionable. In a number of instances, the docu- 
ments, under the seal of the feudal lord, are 
extant ; in some establishing the payment of the 
priest by his own authority ; in others joining the 
seals of his immediate heirs, when they happened to 
have any peculiar power over the disposal of the lands. 
Selden's History of Tithes abounds with evidences of 
this style of distribution. 

The seizure of the church property by Henry VIII. 
was the act of a notorious tyrant, and cannot justify 
any interference with property of any kind. But even 
that tyrannical seizure had a pretext, which can be 
offered no longer. In the perpetual civil wars of 
England, the parish clergy had been, in a great mea- 
sure, driven to take refuge in the monasteries, which 
were then places not only of great opulence, pro- 
tected by the prevalent superstition of the time, and 
under the powerful sanction of the papacy ; but were 
in general places also of considerable strength. The 
splendour, the luxury, the learned leisure, the popular 
veneration, the easy and social existence, and the actual 
personal safety of those communities, formed an ir- 
resistible contrast with the seclusion, the narrow 
means, the rude association, and the personal insecu- 
rity of parochial life. The convent soon became the 
permanent refuge of the parish priesthood. In re- 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 97 

turn, they contributed their income to the support 
of the convent. The tithes and glebe, in process of 
a few generations, thus became the property of the 
monastery ; the service of the parish churches being 
almost wholly supplied by priests sent from the con- 
ventual body, as its agents, and thence named 
vicars ; for whose support a certain smaller portion 
of the tithes was allotted, thence called vicarial : the 
great tithes, with the glebe, or actual lands attached 
to the priest's house, being retained by the monks. 
This abuse grew excessive, in the long inter- 
val between the Conquest and the Reformation. 
The crusades, and the prodigal and profligate lives of 
the great barons, — who expected, by a death-bed 
legacy to the monks, to atone for a life of violence, — 
augmented the convent-lands, until they were com- 
puted to amount to a third of the island. An abuse 
of this magnitude undoubtedly called for a remedy ; 
and Henry's passion for plunder only took advantage 
of a national evil. But his measure had the taint of 
tyranny. It was sweeping, lawless, and fruitless. 
The rightful property essential to the religious edu- 
cation of the people, the funds for the poor, and the 
lands of hospitals, were involved in the fate of the 
ill-gotten gains of the convent. Yet the country was 
but little enriched by the change ; for the church- 
lands were given up to the retainers of the court ; 
and that soil, which, under the monks, had been in 
general carefully cultivated, and rendered productive 



»» THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

by the knowledge of the only Englishmen who had 
any valuable intercourse with foreign countries, was, 
in a multitude of instances, left to the decay natural 
in the hands of rude retainers, or giddy proprietors ; 
indolent soldiers, or that frivolous generation to 
whom the court was the centre of all preferment and 
all pleasure. 

Thus arose the " impropriate " livings in the hands 
of laymen ; which are now actual estates. 

Only a comparatively small portion of the old 
livings were restored to the church. Still the right 
to those livings was not derived from the king, nor 
from the legislature. It was a recurrence to the 
original title given by the owners ; a title older 
than of any other species of property ; acknowledged in 
every form by the ancient laws, and incapable of being 
alienated by any thing but palpable injustice. So stands 
at this hour the right of the Church of England. 

All the arguments commonly used against church 
property are fallacies. Thus it has been said, that 
the people are taxed to pay for the support of the 
clergy. This is a fallacy. The people are no more 
taxed for the support of the priest, than they are for 
the support of the Duke of Devonshire — both priest 
and duke being supported by property, not taken 
from the people, but allotted by individuals to whom 
it belonged, and who might have disposed of it in any 
other way whatever. This answers the outcry of all 
the sectaries, who complain that they are taxed for a 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 99 

church in which they do not believe. They might as 
justly complain that they are taxed for a duke in 
whom they do not believe. But it is said that 
tithes are a burden upon the landholder. This too, 
is a fallacy. If the landholder be a tenant, they can 
be no burden on him ; for he takes the land the 
cheaper the more tithe it pays. If the landholder be 
the proprietor of the estate, neither does he pay for 
the clergy ; it being obvious, that whether he in- 
herited or purchased the property, it came to him 
with an allowance for the tithes ; the church in- 
heritance being transmitted from an ancestor a thou- 
sand years back ; (what living family can claim such an 
ancestor) or the estate being sold to him with the ob- 
vious reservation of the tithe ; for if the land had been 
tithe free, the price would have been higher ; the only 
difference to the purchaser being, that instead of 
paying the whole value of the land in one sum, he 
divides it between two persons, — the proprietor and 
clergyman, each of them having a legal right ; but the 
right of the latter being immeasurably superior in 
antiquity. 

Or, if it be said, that if the tithe fall upon neither 
the farmer nor the landlord, it falls upon the pub- 
lic in the shape of a tax of a tenth on provisions : — 
this too is a fallacy. If the parson burned his tithe, 
or suffered it to rot on the ground, there would be a 
public loss of a tenth. But the parson sells it, or 
lives on it with his family. Thus the produce exists 

H 2 



100 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

and is converted to the public use ; with only this 
difference, that instead of the whole produce of the 
farm coming to market in the farmer's cart, a part of 
it comes in the parson's. The amount in the market 
is of course, the same ; and the price of provisions 
is neither raised nor lowered, by there being two bun- 
dles instead of one. 

But it is said, — that tithes prevent agricultural im- 
provements, by advancing a claim on every new object 
of tillage. This is the only argument that has a show 
of force ; and yet this too is a fallacy. If the farmer 
lays out fifty pounds additional in any new culture, 
the clergyman, who is undoubtedly entitled to his 
share in the product of the land, may claim his tenth. 
But, in the first place, the farmer has made his cal- 
culations of profit with this knowledge : and in the 
next, if he involve himself in any difficulty on the 
point, the evil lies at his own door ; for nothing is more 
easy, and, indeed, nothing is more common, than that 
amicable agreement between the clergyman and the 
farmer, by which a regular rent is paid, let the im- 
provements for the time be what they may. But, 
that the clergyman's means should rise with the 
general opulence of the country is a manner of high 
public policy ; for it is essential to the usefulness of a 
clergy, that they should keep up their level with the 
country ; and, that, while the people round them are 
growing rich, they should not be growing poor. In 
all countries, a pauper loses public respect, let the 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 101 

colour of his coat be what it may : and a beggared 
clergy would be scorned as teachers, or perhaps, 
in their weaker members, might be driven to uphold 
their influence by the arts which sustained the men- 
dicant orders ; or be even tempted into hostility to a 
state which sank them below the less educated ranks, 
and, like the struggling French vicars, look for an im- 
provement of their condition in a general overthrow. 
But so far as agricultural interests are concerned, the 
law allows of a composition, for a period which 
gives the most anxious improver more than time 
enough to pursue his plans to the full extent of 
speculation. 

One of the most frequent sources of popular out- 
cry against the establishment, is the assertion, that 
though the church confessedly possesses a right to a 
provision, yet that it has usurped more than the ori- 
ginal grant ; that the tithes were originally divided 
into four parts, of which but one was for the priest ; 
the other three being severally, for the repairs of the 
church, for the maintenance of the bishop, and for 
the support of the poor. But this, too, is a fallacy > 
generated by confounding the transactions of the 
Romish age of the church with others later by some 
hundreds of years; and the transactions of the foreign 
church with those of the English establishment. 

The first revenues of Christianity were voluntary 
contributions. The apostles sanctioned and directed 
the laying up of a weekly sum in the hands of the 



102 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

deacons, for the necessary expences of the church, 
for the claims of charity, and for the support of the 
preachers, who had in general abandoned all claims 
to their heathen property, and in some instances had 
given up productive professions. St. Paul constantly 
insists on the right of the preachers to be main- 
tained by the congregations ; though he refuses to 
avail himself of it, from a wish to avoid burthening 
the then persecuted churches. Our Lord in sending 
forth the twelve apostles, (Matthew x.) expressly 
declares their right to be subsisted by the persons to 
whom they brought the gospel, forbidding them to 
make any preparation for their own expenses ; " nei- 
ther purse nor scrip ; for the labourer is worthy of 
his hire." This mode of provision seems to have 
prevailed during the whole time of the great persecu- 
tions, or nearly two hundred and fifty years. But 
the Church was no more intended to be fed by per- 
petual charity, than by perpetual miracle. Even 
among the children of Israel, when the tribes had 
passed the desert, the manna ceased to fall. 

These contributions were matters of good-will, and 
proportioned to the means of the individual. They were 
of various values ; but as, according to the Levitical 
law, a tenth was set apart for the priesthood, the early 
Christians adopted the proportion, and the tenth of 
their gains was generally given. This fund, originally 
placed in the hands of the apostles, was subsequently 
deposited with their successors the bishops, and thus 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 103 

they became the regulators of the distribution. A 
part was allotted to the priests who served the various 
congregations, or travelled through the country ; a 
part to the maintenance of the church buildings ; and 
the residue to the support of the humbler portion of 
the disciples, in case of infirmity, accident, or age ; 
but the parts were generally unequal, and the whole 
was regulated by the necessity of the case, and the 
wisdom of the head of the diocese or congregation. 

This arrangement seems to have ceased at a very 
early period in England, and to have necessarily given 
way to the regular endowment of the clergy ; the 
contributions made in the churches being thencefor- 
ward appropriated solely to the poor. But, among us, 
the legal and national provision for the poor, in- 
troduced by the 43d of Elizabeth, at length super- 
seded this collection ; and it ceased, as contributions 
for the clergy had ceased ; and for the same reason. 

The last argument, and it is one which naturally 
exhausts the controversy, is the wealth of the church. 
We are told that, allowing the clergy to have a right 
to a maintenance, they " can have no right to wallow 
in the present enormity of church wealth." But the 
whole statement is an assumption, and the argument 
upon it must therefore be a fallacy. The total amount of 
the public endowments of the Establishment is about 
£1,628,095. Those form the obnoxious part, in the 
opinion of our haranguers. The livings in private 
patronage, which are equivalent to personal estates, 



104 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

and which those landholders, who harangue in the 
loudest tone against the church, retain with all the 
eagerness of private property — livings with which 
they endow their sons and their connexions, or which 
they sell, — amount to a much larger sum, viz. 
£2,084,043.— The whole revenue being £3,872,133. 
which, divided among 11,342 benefices, (the number 
in England and Wales,) leaves only £300. a year as 
the average of an English living ! 

But trivial as this sum is for the support of a man 
who must keep up a decent rank in society ; who in 
most instances has a family ; and whose education has 
on an average cost £800. a large deduction must still 
be made for his actual official expenses. He must 
keep his parsonage-house in repair ; in general he 
must pay a considerable sum for previous build- 
ings ; and there are many instances in which the ad- 
vantage of having a house is counterbalanced by 
the necessary expenses. It is computed, that, taking 
the whole as a mere matter of pecuniary calculation, 
a clergyman, before he can expect a living, ex- 
pends in principal and interest, above £1100., which 
about middle life would purchase an annuity of £90. 
a year, thus leaving him but £210. as a recompense 
for his clerical labour, his literature, the devotion of 
his life to solitude, in nine instances out of ten ; and 
all this, to gain an income below the average profits 
of a country tailor, or grocer in a tolerable course of 
trade. 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 105 

The advowsons are the true burthen of the church ; 
yet those are not the crime of the establishment; — but 
the property of the country gentlemen, — ofthewhigs 
as well as the tories, of the great reforming aristocrats, 
and general patriotic and fox-hunting portion of the 
legislature. We see those livings advertised in the 
newspapers with as little ceremony as the advertise- 
ment of an ox or an ass, and of course purchased 
with as little ; the chief recommendation being, ' that 
the living lies in a sporting country and in the neigh- 
bourhood of several packs of first-rate hounds.' The 
most valuable reform would be one which would res- 
tore those advowsons wholly to the church ; the next 
would be one which for ever prohibited their sale. 

But the establishment cannot be charged with 
those offences. They are the result of the rob- 
bery of the church, not of her will ; and the only 
remedy is to be looked for in the legislature. The 
vulgar writers who declare the church revenues to be 
£8,000,000. make no distinction between the right- 
ful revenues of the ecclesiastic and the usurped reve- 
nues of the layman ; they throw the impropriate 
tithes into the same mass with the church tithes, and 
where nearly twice the value is grasped by the lay 
descendants of the minions of Henry, they fling the 
whole charge on the heads of the clergy. 

The clergy are ill paid ; their emoluments are 
below those of any other class of educated men in the 
empire ; and the attempt either to degrade them in 



106 THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 

the public eye, or to rob them of their legitimate 
right, would be one of the grossest offences against 
law, and, as the offenders might soon discover, one of 
the most formidable hazards in policy. None but 
the knave or the fool can vilify a great system, 
without which the British empire would speedily be 
a republic, its religion a chaos of contending sects, 
and its dominion a rope of sand. 

But there are other considerations. We live in 
a new time. Society is changing its aspect; its 
physiognomy is no longer to be taken from the 
higher orders ; it is formed by the multitude, and 
that visage is a bold, a reckless, and an appalling one. 
Physical force, for the first time in the annals of our 
country, is developing itself; whether to try the 
strength of our institutions, or to confirm them by 
the struggle. But our legislature, government, and 
political safeguards of all descriptions, are already 
and palpably beginning to feel the presence of a new 
and formidable element of power. The, throne, and 
the noble and opulent orders are no longer the sole, 
nor even the chief, objects of political interest ; the 
public eye is no more fixed on the gilded and high- 
wrought pinnacles of society; but on the ground- 
work, the strong, dark, and rugged material of the 
foundation ; the iron and granite of the moral fabric, 
materials of indispensable necessity and invaluable use, 
but deeply requiring to be wrought by the hand of 
wisdom. 



THE CHURCH IN IRELAND. 107 

If the popular strength is to become the national 
safety, it must be taught temper and contentment, the 
generous subordination, and the conscientious alle- 
giance which religion alone can impress on the 
substance of the national mind. To perform this 
essential duty, the Church of England alone is 
adequate. Its monarchical form renders it the na- 
tural guardian of a constitution essentially monarch- 
ical. The republicanism of all other forms renders 
them hazardous allies, whenever the direct struggle of 
the state shall be against revolution. Perhaps in 
calmer times they may stand without grave public 
injury, — like the walls of lava built round the villages 
on Vesuvius, they may answer ordinary purposes in 
ordinary times ; but when the mighty mass below 
begins to heave, when the popular mind throws out 
flame, and the great eruption roars, they must give 
way ; like the lava walls, they must melt into their 
congenial matter, and swell the torrent and the 
flame. 



VII. 

CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 



April, 1836. 

The City of London Conservative Association arose out of the 
public alarm for the safety of the constitution in Church and 
State, on the retirement of Sir Robert Peel's administration 
in 1835. In the manly paper which it published as the 
statement of its principles, it thus adverted to the Estab- 
lishment : — 

' Of the particular vote which led to the retirement of the 
ministry, it may be affirmed that it is awfully calculated to 
alarm the dearest feelings of the English people. The right 
to appropriate ecclesiastical property to purposes other than 
ecclesiastical, has by that vote been asserted. The majority 
by which that vote was carried, consisted of Roman Catho- 
lic members of the House of Commons. The oath by which 
those members were supposed to be restrained from voting 
has been found insufficient for its purpose : and the people 
of England have now presented to them the spectacle of the 
Roman Catholic section of the lower house of Parliament 
disposing of the revenues of the Protestant Church. Can 
this be said to be agreeable to the spirit of the constitution, 
if that constitution be essentially Protestant ; if it has hither- 
to been its distinguishing glory, that in all its parts it has 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 109 

upheld the Protestant faith, as the nursery of that pure re- 
ligion in which the conscientious Dissenter and the member 
of the Church of England are equally interested, as the true 
guardian of the morals and liberties of the people of Eng- 
land ? Can it be maintained, that the interests of the 
Church were intended to be placed at the disposal, and under 
the control, of Roman Catholic members of parliament ? ' 
In 1836, at a period of peculiar public anxiety, the Association 
celebrated its first anniversary by a dinner, in Covent Garden 
Theatre, attended by about a thousand of the principal gen- 
tlemen of the city, many noblemen, and other leading indi- 
viduals connected with public life. The example was followed 
throughout; England ; and the spirit of the country was 
strongly awakened. 

In acknowledgment of the health of ' the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and the Protestant clergy of the 
empire,' the following observations were made : — 

* Mr. Chairman, as I have been called on to an- 
swer this toast, I cannot hesitate to acknowledge the 
honour. Of course, I do not think of standing here 
as the representative of the church; but 1 must feel 
gratified in a high degree at hearing the name of the 
Establishment so strikingly given, and so ardently 
received in the vast and magnificent assembly which 
I see before me. I rejoice in the unanimous plau- 
dits with which that name was welcomed, as an 
evidence that the people of England retain all their 
old sensibility to virtue, and all their old homage to 
justice. I use the word justice advisedly ; for though 
the Church of England loves to have the heart of the 
nation, she is entitled to lay claim to its allegiance 



110 CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 

on the strongest ground of obligation. I say it, with- 
out fear of denial ; that to her Establishment Eng- 
land is indebted at this hour for all that she possesses 
of true prosperity, summed up in the possession of 
pure liberty and solid empire. 

f The proof is of the most palpable order. It is 
remarkable, that England is the only country of 
Europe which has, or ever had, a perfectly free con- 
stitution. The sublimest thinker of the ancient 
world, in his dream of political perfection, imagined 
a balanced government, and pronounced it a splendid 
impossibility : The Platonic dream was realized in 
the British constitution ! Nor was this failure of 
liberty among other nations for want of many an 
eager wish and many a daring struggle. The love 
of freedom is an instinct. The image of heaven has 
not so feebly vindicated itself in the heart of man, as 
to have left him regardless of this great principle of 
national elevation. All the countries of Europe, 
from their earliest time, have longed for a constitu- 
tion. All .have successively laid the foundations ; 
but then came unexpected evil ; republican rash- 
ness, military violence, iron despotism, or sullen 
superstition, tore up the foundations, or covered 
them with a morass of ignorance and blood. Eng- 
land alone both laid the foundations, and raised the 
superstructure. 

1 And what was the cause of this mighty differ- 
ence ? It was this ; that she had laid the foundations 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. Ill 

in pure religion ; and raised the superstructure with 
the sacred ceremonial of truth, justice and piety ; 
until, like the Jewish citadel, it arose, a temple and 
a tower — the emblem of mingled strength and sanc- 
tity ; to stand among, and above, all nations, the great, 
the hallowed, the impregnable fortress for the oppressed 
and fugitive religion and freedom of mankind. 

' I express this the more directly, because we are 
familiar with idle attempts to deprive the Refor- 
mation of its claim to the patronage of British 
liberty. But are we to be told that our liberties 
owed their birth, to either the natural daring of the 
public heart, or to the fostering care of Rome ? On 
the latter point, common sense decides at once. The 
civil freeman never can be fabricated out of the re- 
ligious slave. On the former ; no man rejoices more 
than myself in the high qualities of the native 
character, in its manliness and dignity, in all the 
noble appetencies and powers of a people made to 
play a great part in the world. But, I ask, where 
was the liberty of England before the Reformation ? 
Are we to dig it from the grave of the Saxon dy- 
nasty ? Are we to look for it in the dungeons of 
the Norman ? are we to gather its fragments, like 
the limbs of a trampled warrior, from the car- 
nage of the York and Lancaster fields ? Or, if we 
are to hear that the Great Charter was the work of 
times of spiritual slavery ; must we attribute nothing 
to the inevitable course of human nature — to the 



112 CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 

swelling of the human heart against merciless chains— 
to the strong recovery with which the innate prin- 
ciple of freedom starts up under intolerable pressure 
— to the returning sense in the bosom of the lowest 
slave, that, broken as he is, he is still a man ? 

Yet was this the boon of Popery ? Are we not to 
remember, that the demand of the Great Charter no- 
toriously arose out of the indignant feeling of the nobles 
of England against the tyranny of Rome ; that it was 
extorted from a monarch who had covered himself 
with the last contempt, by suffering the diadem to 
be trampled underfoot by the Papal legate — that the 
immortal sentence, f We shall not suffer the laws of 
England to be subverted,* the ( Nolumus leges An- 
glice mutari, which has passed into the inscription of 
British liberty ; was the defiance of the barons to a 
tyrannical effort to vitiate the Saxon law by the 
Romish ? Are we not also to remember, that for de- 
manding the Great Charter, the whole of the English 
nobles, with their primate, were laid under anathema 
by Rome. After this, let us hear no more of the 
generation of freedom from tyranny. No ! The 
cradle of human rights was never rocked in the cell 
of the monk. The sounds of national justice were 
never sent forth from the wheels and flames of the 
inquisition. No, if we ask from Popery the egg } we 
are sure to be given the scorpion. From the begin- 
ning of the world to the end, no such thing ever was 
or ever will be found, as a Popish regenerator ; it is 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 113 

an extravagance in conception, an impossibility in 
nature, the last experiment of the most insolent 
hypocrisy on the weakest credulity of man. 

But am I not speaking of things as undeniable as 
the sun at noon-day ; when I pronounce, that our 
first actual possession of freedom, dates from our 
actual possession of a Protestant establishment. Pro- 
testantism had given us the true religion ; but the 
Establishment gave us the startling splendour of 
that light from heaven fitted to the organs of civil 
society. Thus, unlike the German mysticism, or 
the wild and volatile conversion of France, it gave 
us ardour without enthusiasm, vigour without vio- 
lence, and the noblest zeal untarnished by the 
slightest breath of persecution. 

Trivial as empire is in the comparison ; from 
this period we are to reckon even the birth of British 
empire. What had been the result of all our earlier 
struggles for dominion? Constantly warring, and 
singularly triumphant, all had been wasted valour 
and fruitless glory ; even what we gained on the 
continent by alliance we lost by war ; at the close of 
a conflict of two hundred years, we had withdrawn 
into our own borders, and even the last crumbling 
memorial of British conquest, the fortress where 
alone on earth the British flag waved over an enemy's 
soil, was torn from our feebleness. But the Refor- 
mation came ; and came with the donative of bound- 
less dominion in its hand. In that hour was founded our 



114 CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 

commercial, and our colonial, throne. Like the old 
contest of the deities for Athens, the rival emblems 
of power and peace started from the soil at the touch 
of its sceptre : but, unlike the war-horse and the 
olive of that fine fiction, the emblems here were con- 
joined, and England inherited at once the salient 
strength, and the rich tranquillity, of empire. 

But the principle has undergone the test of both 
adversity and prosperity. If a still stronger evidence 
of the essential value of the established Church to 
freedom could be demanded, it was given in the days 
of the great rebellion of 1648. Then, when a con- 
spiracy, laid solely in bitter schism and reckless am- 
bition, had resolved on the overthrow of the monarchy, 
what was the first object of assault ? The enemies 
of the State had studied their tactics well ; they 
knew what was the chief bulwark of the constitution, 
and they instantly assailed the Church. The nation, 
stunned and deceived, deserted its cause. There 
was not then, as, thank God, there is now, a noble 
array of loyalty and virtue rushing from the extre- 
mities of the land round its walls. In the ignorance 
and surprise of the time its identity with the con- 
stitution was forgotten. The church was broken 
down, and through that breach rebellion poured in, 
and stormed the throne ! And is it to be forgotten, 
that this foul and sanguinary conspiracy was in the 
express name of Reform — that its sworn objects were 
a purer liberty and a purer religion— and that its 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 115 

success trampled down both, and gave us in their 
stead only a sullen tyranny, and a frenzied fanaticism ? 
But look to the new example. "When it was the 
will of Providence to restore the constitution, what 
was the leader in that most glorious and permanent 
of all victories ? — the Established Church. Who was 
the struggler and the champion in the revolution of 
1688, while the statesman was silent, and the soldier 
stood looking on ? It was the churchman, who 
braved the tyranny and its tribunals. It was the 
bishops, who went to the dungeon as the representa- 
tives of British rights, and returned from it as the 
restorers of the British constitution. And is it not 
even from that championship that we are entitled to 
date the more than reinstatement ; the new supre- 
macy of the constitution ? That triumph shot a new 
vigour into the frame of the moral and physical em- 
pire. It had found the form lifeless, but the breath 
it breathed into its nostrils was from heaven, and the 
clay became a living soul. That triumph has had no 
rival in the records of human fame, whether we 
regard its means, its progress, or its consequences. 
Without shedding a drop of gore, it swept all hos- 
tility from the land — without shattering the throne, 
it subverted a tyranny — without inflaming the peo- 
ple to license, it filled the national heart with the 
most glowing blood of freedom. If, then, such has 
been the history — and we dare the hardiest scepticism 
to deny that such it has been — what must be the 
I 2 



116 CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 

conclusion If civil freedom has been strong, or 
weak, in every age of England, in proportion to 
the strength or weakness of the Established Church ; 
with what just scorn must we not listen to all cavils 
against the independence and honour of the Estab- 
lishment ? If we see the national grandeur rise with 
its rise, and go down with its diminished glory ; what 
blind philosophy must it not be, that doubts the 
connection ; or asks for another cause of the imperial 
tide, than that great repository of pure and solemn 
influence, which reflects upon our darkness the lustres 
of the skies. 

But — to look upon the question in even the lowest 
point, of practice, Break down the Church, and what 
must be the consequence ? You will always have a 
religion in some shape or other ; for it is one of 
the exigencies of man, one of the strong necessities 
of the human heart. But, instead of the manly, and 
decorous, the learned, and loyal Church of England, 
you will have either a base, sanguinary, and licen- 
tious infidelity, or a wild, ignorant, and factious en- 
thusiasm ; or embodying both, and domineering over 
all, the cloud-enveloped and fire-fanged superstition 
of Rome ! Or, strip the Church of its property, 
that property which it holds by a more ancient title 
than any other in the land ; and you commit not only 
a fraud, but a folly. Beware of the curse of the 
spoiler ! You must make the clergy either pensioners 
or .mendicants. Are you prepared to see the per- 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 117 

sonal influences and popular ability of 20,000 highly 
educated men, enlisted, by the mere necessity of 
bread, in the actual servitude of any administration 
that is ever likely to rule your country ? Or, if you 
cast them loose ; will your knowledge of the common 
action of injury and despair upon the mind, save you 
from the fear of seeing your country wrapped in the 
perpetual flame of faction ? Do I hold forth this as a 
menace from the Church ? By no means. The living 
generation of your clergy will be submissive and true, 
peaceful and loyal to the last. But when you shall 
have driven them into exile or the grave ; you will 
have another race to deal with, a new generation of 
your own, begotten in convulsion, and shaped in 
popular conflict ; a band of daring fanatics, or reckless 
hypocrites, armed with weapons, before whose edge 
no government could stand. Are you still unaware 
of the measureless peril of a hostile priesthood ? 
Look, then, to Ireland. See in her little Popish 
church, of barely 2000 priests, how slender a shape of 
wiliness and venom can strike its sting into the heart 
of a mighty empire. See the finger of the parish 
priest actually moving the whole machinery of the 
proudest of all legislatures ! See his lips uttering the 
voice that bows the coroneted heads of council as to 
an oracle ! Hear him from his turf altar haughtily 
commanding England to choose the alternative ; the 
sacrifice of her constitution, or the separation of her 
pmpire 1 



118 CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. 

It is on those grounds that we require, in the name 
of common justice, that we shall be molested no more 
by the virulence of traffickers in faction. Let not 
the Church have antagonists whose arts disgrace all 
honourable hostility. If we must perish, let us pe- 
rish in the day. 

We fix the claim of the Church, not on indulgence, 
but on right. We show her services. We prove, 
that the constitution has grown with her growth, 
and by her growth. But we call on you for more than 
defence — we call on you for energy, for vigilance, 
for fidelity to your Church, to your religion, and to 
your country. We call on you to reject those con- 
spirators alike against all religion and all liberty ; 
who come, like the assassins of Caesar, with the peti- 
tion in one hand, and the knife in the other. In 
utter scorn of the rage of disappointed treason, we 
call on you to take the only step that can restore 
yourselves to honour, and the empire to peace. If 
you suffer the Church to fall, in that hour you dig the 
grave of the constitution. I know that the heart of 
England is still sound, and the arm is still strong. 
But you must extinguish the mission of tumult. 
Your institutions must no longer be insulted by the 
vagrancy of rebellion. 

As the first security of the nation, you must sus- 
tain the church. It is not while the clouds are 
gathering over the horizon, and with the thunders 
beginning to roll, that you can take down the con- 



CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES. J 19 

ductors of the lightning. Look to your coming 
struggle. It is not when the new possession of poli- 
tical power is stimulating the old passion for reli- 
gious supremacy ; and the rudest shape of physical 
force is filled and inflamed with the subtlest spirit of 
evil; that you safely turn away from that great teacher, 
by which alone the demon can be rebuked. If all 
acknowledge that infidelity and imposture have ad- 
vanced their inarch over a large portion of Europe 
even in our day ; what is our obvious duty, but to 
strengthen the defence of the citadel ? It is not when 
the assault is marshalling within sight of the battle- 
ments, that we can dismiss the garrison to their 
slumbers. Higher interests than even those of free- 
dom and empire, may be at this hour staked on the 
sacred vigour, solemn sincerity, and majestic faith 
of England. While nations are darkening with the 
shadow of the wings of the god of this world, we are 
called on to fight the battle of the God of truth. In 
that cause we shall conquer, if we faint not. Armed 
for the most illustrious interests of man, we have 
only to persevere ; till the great, predicted consum- 
mation comes, — till we see a power loftier than man 
supersede all human exertion, assert the dignity of 
heaven, and by one grand display of combined judg- 
ment and mercy, at once seal the dungeon of the 
rebel spirit, and proclaim to the earth an immortal 
age of peace, prosperity, and triumphant religion. 



VIII. 

ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, AND 
PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 



In the year 1837, a Second Anniversary of the City of London 
Conservative Association was held, in a pavilion erected for 
the purpose. About 2000 persons attended the dinner ; 
among whom were Lords Jermyn, Manson, Sandon, Rad- 
stock, and Teignmouth, Sir Henry Hardinge, Sir Edward 
Sugden, Sir Frederick Pollock, and many other gentlemen 
of distinction. 

On ( The health of the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and the Established Church of the United Kingdom,' 
being given, it was acknowledged in the following 
speech. 

Mr. Chairman, — -I am not so presumptuous, as to 
suppose myself entitled to stand here as the represen- 
tative of the Church ; but I have no hesitation in say-* 
ing that I should regard that church as most ungrate- 
ful, were she not to acknowledge the debt which 
she owes to the country. If she still exist, it is not 
improbably due, under God, to great, spontaneous, 
and patriotic meetings, like that which I now have 
the honour to address. 

Sir, since this time twelve months, the condition 



ROMISH PLEDGES. 121 

of the church has been importantly changed. She 
was then surrounded by dangers. She saw the 
land paraded by an itinerancy of sedition. She 
saw a guilty league of the hypocrite and the 
rebel openly proclaimed against her. She saw, — and 
this was the most painful sight of all, — the country 
looking on with a strange and distempered apathy. 
It was then that this great association came forward. 
The city of London declared its determination to 
stand by the altar and the throne. That noble 
determination was nobly answered. The thunders 
of that voice, those protecting thunders, were echoed 
round the whole horizon. Patriotism, truth, and 
liberty were in the sound ; and * Church and King ' 
was the universal response of the empire. With this 
acknowledgment, we cannot be insensible to the ser- 
vices of the champions of the public cause in the 
legislature ; to that manly and generous eloquence, 
which f wielded the fierce democracy ; ' or to that 
dignified firmness, which made the House of Lords 
the citadel of the constitution, The peerage 
of England have nobly justified their elevation. In 
disdaining a spurious popularity, they have made 
themselves supreme masters of the true. They have 
already had their reward. They have augmented the 
lustre of their coronets, by the very lightnings which 
they conducted away from the head of their country. 
But I desired to see a still superior power in 
action. While I honoured the disciplined force of the 



122 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

legislature, as the standing army of the constitution, 
I felt that there was, in the calm, informal, sacred 
sincerity of the nation, the great saving power. I 
felt that victory was never more secure, than when 
the spirit of the nation, like another Decius, — in the 
hour of battle, leaving troops and tactics behind, and 
covering itself only with the robe from the altar, 
rushed unarmed into the ranks of its enemies. 

But, though the danger has been stayed, we must 
not believe that it has been extinguished. We have 
a dreadful enemy to contend with ; — Popery. That 
enemy has large views. It disregards alike local 
defeats and local triumphs. It calculates by empires 
and centuries. It disdains the petty partisanship of 
Ireland, which it has long looked upon as a slave — 
England, which it already counts upon as a province ; 
and its legislature, which it has determined to make 
a victim. 

I shall never listen to any man calling the 
church of England a profession ; it is a principle. 
It is not a state contrivance for the support of a 
peculiar class. It is a great institute of divine wis- 
dom and mercy, for the formation of a people to the 
noblest stature of virtue, knowledge, and freedom. 
In the presence of the Searcher of hearts, I believe ; 
that, in defending the established religion- of Eng- 
land, every man is defending the holiness of his own 
fire-side, the liberty of his own conscience, and the 
safety of his own being. 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 123 

The very principle of Popery is domination. If it 
set its foot upon your cabinet, it is only that it may 
set its foot upon your constitution. If it over- 
top your constitution, it is only that it may overtop 
your church. Its heel once upon your church, it 
would have under it the whole Protestantism of 
Christendom. It would have surmounted the only 
obstacle that intercepts its view of universal sove- 
reignty. With England Popish, it would stand on 
that height from which it would have before it " all 
the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory of 
them." Would it, or would it not, exult in the 
temptation ? 

But are we to be told " the catastrophe has not yet 
come?" What, with the dagger at our throats, are 
we to disbelieve in its point, because we do not feel 
it already in our veins ? What, with the mine ac- 
tually and boastfully laid in our presence, and the 
match already waving in the hand, are we to doubt, 
until it explodes ? When the great orator and 
patriot of Greece was thus vexed by fools and neu- 
trals, he exclaimed, ' What can be newer, than that 
a barbarian from Macedon should domineer over 
Greece ? ' What, exclaims the indignant Protestan- 
tism of England, can be more astonishing and omi- 
nous, than that a Popish faction should domineer 
over a British legislature ? What more astonishing 
and ominous, than that the Church of Ireland should 
be degraded from a temple into an alms-house ; and 



124 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

even that alms-house, but for the generous interpo- 
sition of your country, on the point of being turned 
into a dungeon ? What more ominous, than to see 
the Protestants of Ireland already anticipating exile, 
and scattering themselves to the ends of the earth ? 
What more ominous, than to see all the great leading 
names of the senate excluded from the service of 
the country ? To see the three first men of the em- 
pire actually ostracised, and for the old reason of 
faction — that they were the three first men. To see 
the great orator and statesman of the House of Com- 
mons, Sir Robert Peel, a man who must command a 
majority in any other assembly of the nation, labouring 
night after night in vain. To see the great lawyer and 
orator of the House of Lords, Lord Lyndhurst, at 
whose glance the cabinet shrinks ; wasting in re- 
monstrance those noble faculties which should 
be employed in renovating the energies of his 
country. To see the great Captain, the conqueror 
of the conqueror of Europe, the man whose name, for 
ages to come; will at once illustrate and shame our 
generation — Wellington himself, a cipher in the 
councils of the empire, whose diadem he has sur- 
rounded with glory ! But, if there were one thing more 
astonishing and ominous than all the rest, must it not 
be to see whom we have in their room ? 

Sir, I do not wish to speak in any instance with dis- 
respect of any government appointed by the monarch. 
I feel a due reverence for the acts of majesty. But I 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 1^"> 

speak of a government not appointed by the monarch — 
the Romish governors of the government. I disdain 
the fictions of politics; but the facts are before all eyes. 
Is it not the fact; that in place of all the ability, wis- 
dom, experience, and public character of the coun- 
try, the state is governed at this moment by thirty 
mutes? a deaf and dumb band, emasculated of every 
faculty, but that of obedience to the nod of the chief 
executioner ; and ready, at that nod, to bowstring 
the constitution ! 

On this subject I do not wish to speak with ridi- 
cule. My feeling is one of indignant scorn, for the 
arts which have betrayed such multitudes of the 
generous people of Ireland into the violation of the 
most solemn bonds that can be expressed in language. 

' Di quibus imperium est aniraarum, umbraeque silentes, 
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, 
Sit mihi fas audita Ioqui.' 

That conduct has already been stigmatised in Par- 
liament by the blackest of all names. I shall not 
now use that name, nor any other that can be personal. 
I confine myself to the mere documents. I first 
come to the successive, solemn, and authorized 
pledges of the Roman Catholic body, previously to 
the Act of Emancipation in 1829. 

The Roman Catholic body originally assumed a 
form in Ireland in the middle of the last century. 
In the year 1757 they published a ' Declaration of 



123 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

the Catholics of Ireland,' framed by one of their 
bishops, Dr O'Keeffe, and their principal laymen ; 
which, amongst other principles, pronounced the fol- 
lowing : — ' In the face of our country, of all Europe, 
and before God, we make this, our deliberate and 
solemn declaration. It has been objected to us, that 
we wish to subvert the present church establishment, 
for the purpose of substituting a Catholic establish- 
ment in its stead. Now we do hereby disclaim, dis- 
avow, and solemnly abjure any such intention. And 
further, if we shall be admitted into any share of the 
Constitution, by our being restored to the rights of 
the elective franchise, we are ready in the most so- 
lemn manner to declare, that we will not exercise 
that privilege to disturb and weaken the establish- 
ment of the Protestant religion, or Protestant 
government in this country.' 

In 1792, the Roman Catholics presented a petition 
to the Irish parliament, containing these words : 
( We solemnly and conscientiously declare, that we 
are satisfied with the present condition of our eccles- 
iastical polity. With satisfaction we acquiesce in the 
establishment of the national church. We neither 
repine at its possessions, nor envy its dignities. We 
are ready on this point, to give every assurance that 
is binding upon man.' 

In 1793, the oath taken by the Roman Catholics, 
in conformity to the act of Parliament; contained the 
following words : ' I do hereby disclaim, disavow, 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES 127 

and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the 
present church establishment, for the purpose of sub- 
stituting a Catholic establishment in its stead. And 
I do solemnly swear, that I will not exercise any 
privilege to which I am, or may become, entitled, to 
disturb or weaken the Protestant religion and Pro- 
testant government in this kingdom.' By this oath 
they obtained the elective franchise. 

In 1805, their petition to the parliament of the 
United Kingdom contained these words : ' Your pe- 
titioners, most humbly state, that they have solemnly 
and publicly taken the oaths by law prescribed to his 
Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, as tests of political 
and moral principles. Your petitioners beg leave to 
represent, that, by those awful tests, they bind them- 
selves, in the presence of the All-seeing Deity, whom 
all classes of Christians adore, to be faithful, and bear 
true allegiance to their most gracious sovereign, &c. 
That they have disclaimed, disavowed, and solemnly 
abjured every intention to subvert the present 
church establishment, for the purpose of substituting 
a Catholic establishment in its stead ; and that they 
have, also, solemnly sworn that they will not exer- 
cise any privilege to which they are, or may become, 
entitled, to disturb or weaken the Protestant re- 
ligion or Protestant government of Ireland.' This 
was a petition for seats in Parliament. 

In 1808, the petition of the Roman Catholics to 
the British Parliament still more in detail pledged 



128 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

them to the original declaration ; — ' Your petitioners 
most solemnly declare that they do not seek, or wish, 
in any way to injure, or incroach upon, the rights, 
privileges, possessions, or revenues, appertaining to 
the bishops and clergy of the Protestant religion, as 
by law established, or to the churches committed to 
their charge, or any of them.' 

Their petition of 1812 again renewed the pledge : 
' We have solemnly sworn, that we will not exercise 
any privilege to which we are, or may become en- 
titled, to disturb and weaken the Protestant religion, 
or Protestant government in Ireland. We can, with 
perfect truth, assure this honourable house, that the 
political and moral principles, asserted by these 
solemn and special tests, are not merely in union with 
our fixed principles, but expressly inculcated by the 
religion which we profess. We can affirm, with per- 
fect sincerity, that we have no latent views to realise, 
no secret or sinister objects to attain.' 

The petition of 1826, to parliament, thus expressed 
itself: ' Your petitioners seek not the destruction, 
but the enjoyment of the constitution ; and, in the 
pursuit of that desire, they do not, by any means, 
' solicit,' ' or expect,' ' or wish,' that a single in- 
dividual of their Protestant fellow-subjects should be 
deprived of any right, privilege, liberty, or immunity, 
of which he is at present possessed.' 

The Irish Roman Catholic Association addressed 
the people of England in the same year in these 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 129 

words : ' Far from meditating the overthrow or de- 
struction of the Protestant government, and Protes- 
tant establishment of the empire, we are ready to 
swear, as we already do swear, to support,' &c. &c. 
(Here follows the oath.) * We are accused of in- 
tending to overthrow the Church Establishment, 
whilst we contribute to uphold its splendour and its 
power.' 

In the same year, the pastoral address of the Ro- 
man Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland thus 
reinforced the declaration, on the part of the clergy : 
* The Catholics of Ireland disclaim, disavow, and 
solemnly abjure, any intention to subvert the present 
church establishment, for the purpose of substituting 
a Catholic establishment in its stead : and, further, 
they swear, that they will not exercise any privilege 
to which they are, or may be, entitled, * to disturb 
and weaken the Protestant religion and Protestant 
government in Ireland.' The archbishops and bishops 
add, ' emphatically, this full and authentic declara- 
tion, we approve, subscribe, and publish,' &c. 

The English Roman Catholic bishops published a 
declaration, in the same year, containing these words : 
" He who takes an oath is bound to observe it in the 
obvious meaning of the words, or in the known mean- 
ing of the person to whom it is sworn. British Ca- 
tholics are charged with entertaining a pretended 
right to the property of the established church in 
Ireland. We consider such a charge to be totally 



130 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

without foundation : we declare that we entertain no 
pretension to such a claim. We regard all the reve- 
nues and temporalities of the church establishment 
as the property of those on whom they are settled 
by the laws of the land. We disclaim any right, 
title, or pretension, with regard to the same." 

Thus we have the whole Roman Catholic popula- 
tion, and every part of it, successively pledging them- 
selves, before God and man, to avoid all injury, of 
whatever kind, to the established church — neither to 
usurp its titles, nor diminish its property, nor break 
down its constitution. The Romish clergy, the Ro- 
mish Association, and the laity in general, were all 
equally and solemnly bound by the strongest possible 
forms of expression, to pay the Protestant tithes ; 
and all those forms were concentred and consummated 
in the Oath of security taken by their parliamentary 
representatives on the passing of the emancipation 
bill: — 

" I do swear, that I will defend, to the utmost of 
my power, the settlement of property within this 
realm as established by the laws ; and I do hereby 
disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any intention 
to subvert the present church establishment as settled 
by law within this realm ; and I do solemnly swear, 
that I never will exercise any privilege to which I 
am, or may become entitled, to disturb or weaken the 
Protestant religion, or Protestant government, in the 
United Kingdom." 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 131 

By this oath every object that could be com- 
prehended in an honest ambition was put within 
reach of the Roman Catholic. All the old barriers 
were cast down ; parliament, the peerage, the profes- 
sions. He was made free of all the departments of 
ability and energy in general life. The church 
alone was protected ; to whose inviolable security he 
had voluntarily sworn and resworn with increasing 
zeal through half a century of asseveration. 

Could it be believed; had we not been eye-wit- 
nesses of the event ; that the church became, from 
that instant, the principal and universal object of 
Romish attack? That even all the prizes of Romish 
ambition were made contingent to the individual on 
the virulence and daring of the attack ? That every 
Romish beggar who wished to exchange his bank- 
ruptcy for opulence ; every hopeless candidate for 
parliament ; every struggling barrister ; every man 
who coveted to live on government-bread, from a 
chancellor down to a police-constable ; was expected 
to give trial of his fitness for Romish patronage, by 
his audacity against the church. The Romish boast 
now is, that this system has triumphed ; that all 
the offices of dignity or emolument in Ireland are 
rapidly falling into Roman Catholic hands. But the 
church still lingers in existence ; and this sight sours 
the whole revel. " What avail all those things" to the 
Human, while the Mordecai, however in beggary and 
nakedness, " sitteth at the gate." 

K 2 



IS°2 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

What then has been the fulfilment of the universal 
pledge ? An universal, ostentatious, and contemp- 
tuous conspiracy to violate all its obligations? What 
has been the history of Ireland, since 1829 ; but a 
proclaimed war against the property of the church ? 
What has been the purchased conciliation ? — increas- 
ed hostility. What the promised security of the 
church ? — the refusal of tithes, the burning of parson- 
age-houses, and the assassination of clergymen. 
What the boasted national peace ? — a chain of con- 
spiracy extending round the island, and waiting but 
the first casualty of England, to become a chain of 
flame ? What has been the employment of the po- 
pish press, but perpetual libels on the character of 
the establishment ? What is its declared principle, 
but that of a public demand for the overthrow of the 
Irish establishment? The fact is not denied, it is 
openly exulted in. " How glorious," exclaims one 
of its most confidential and active leaders, in his 
speech to his constituents, " that we put the Tories 
out of office, by a resolution on the Irish church, and 
the great principle of the secular appropriation of 
church property " / — (Mr. Shiel's speech at Thurles, 
1835.) And on this single declaratory principle, it 
pronounces that, not merely have the late ministry 
been driven from office, but the present ministry have 
been kept in. 

" The Irish party," says the same speech, " met at 
Lord Lichfield's. The result was, a complete am- 
nesty — a most unqualified reconciliation. And I have 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 133 

further to state, that the advice of Mr. O'Connell, 
and some other members, was mainly instrumental 
in bringing it about. Lord John Russell was called 
to our head ; and we stood before Sir Robert Peel, 
the most firm, the most united, the most concen- 
trated body that ever appeared in opposition." 

Thus, it is now as openly acknowledged, as it was 
once bitterly denied ; that the actual exclusion of 
Sir Robert Peel's cabinet was not for English inter- 
ests, nor even for Whig principles — that it was 
neither for England nor by English hands ; but that 
it was by the Irish Roman Catholics in Parliament, 
the representatives of the priesthood ; and the price 
' appropriation ! ' That principle involved the 
famishing of 2000 Protestant clergy. Who can 
wonder at the rejoicings of the whole troop of rege- 
nerators over so abundant a banquet of human 
misery ? who can doubt the sudden ardour of the pa- 
triotic glance, that saw before it so broad a vista of 
the prison and the grave ? 

The ministry were overwhelmed by the opposition 
thus recruited ; and we have the equally open decla- 
ration, that by this new force alone their successors 
are since sustained. " I have," says the speech, " seen 
the conduct of the ministry, for I have watched it 
narrowly ; and I, for one, will co-operate with Da- 
niel O'Connell, in lending my aid to support and 
maintain it in the place it now holds." 

Would not all this be pronounced the most con- 



lol ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

temptuous of libels on an English cabinet ; if it were 
not uttered by the hot sincerity of lips too proud of 
their success to care how they stung the feelings of 
any man ? Here the whole administration are buried 
in the shadow of the Agitator. They may be suf- 
fered to go through the routine of the day, but it is 
only as substitutes and subsidiaries. He is the 
Atlas ! 

And this is an English cabinet ! With one of the 
the popish orators to lead it in front, and another to 
watch it in the rear ; one to drag the animal by its 
length of ears, and another to scourge it behind on the 
first symptom of deviation, — what is wanting to this 
burlesque of ministerial independence, this peace at 
peril of the whip, this handcuffed liberty, this mill- 
horse freedom of will ? 

Again ; let Englishmen remember the condition of 
the compact-, that it is " the secular appropriation of 
the whole church property of Ireland" — in other 
words, the confiscation of the entire income by which 
exists the Protestant establishment, — not less the great 
instrument of English connexion, than of religion, in 
Ireland. On this sole principle, they are authenti- 
cally told, that their government is fabricated ; that 
for this sole purpose it is kept in existence by its 
fabricators ; and that on the first hesitation to do the 
whole will of those fabricators, the hand that has 
plucked it up by the locks from its primitive ob- 
scurity, and holds it there in contempt of the feelings 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 135 

of England, will instantly let it go, and leave it to 
perish by its own alacrity in sinking. 

But the policy is rapidly becoming practical ; the 
condition of the Irish Church is becoming more hazard- 
ous by the hour; the peasantry, every man of whom 
was pledged by the Roman Catholic body, fifty years 
ago, to pay his tithes ; have been commanded not to 
pay them ; their parliamentary representatives, every 
man of whom was additionally pledged by his solemn 
oath to uphold the laws in this especial instance, 
have never questioned the command. Do we find 
any indignant remonstrance from their priesthood at 
this violation of compact. Do we find their prelates 
assembling to deprecate this breach of faith as a 
scandal to their church, a dishonour to their religion, 
and an absolute and inevitable disqualification for 
their ever being trusted again ? 

What, again, is the evidence of facts ? The Irish 
papers give us the report of a late meeting, at which 
an Archbishop presided, and at which, Resolutions to 
the following purport were adopted : 

" Resolved, That we deeply sympathise with our 
faithful flocks, in the grief and mortification they 
have experienced at the utter prostration of the hopes 
which they entertained of the abolition of the tithe 
system; and that we should be undeserving of the 
confidence which they have uniformly reposed in us, 
if we did not participate in their feelings. 

" Resolved, That as it was not by vague complaints, 



136 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

but by loud remonstrances, as well as by active exer- 
tions, the Catholics of Ireland wrung tardy justice 
from their enemies ; they ought still to persevere in 
this legitimate and constitutional line of conduct, 
which has been already so successful. 

" Resolved, That in no country of ancient or 
modern times, does history offer to our contempla- 
tion grievances more unparalleled than those which 
are embraced in the words, The Protestant establish- 
ment of Ireland. 

"Resolved, That to clear the ground of all the 
encumbrance that retards the growth of justice in 
this country, we shall petition the legislature to ap- 
propriate the tithes and church -lands to national 
purposes. M 

Ts this chance, or principle ? 

Hallam, the most laborious and accurate of modern 
historians, and a declared Whig, thus records the 
principles of popery, as to allegiance and oaths : — 

" In the canon law, it is expressly declared, that 
subjects owe no allegiance to an excommunicated 
monarch, if, after admonition, he is not reconciled to 
the church." 

" Domino excommunicato manente, subditi fideli- 
tatem non debent. Et si longo tempore in ea per- 
stiterit, et monitus non pareat ecclesiae, ab ejus 
debito absolvuntur." (Decretal, lib. v. tit. 37. 
cap. 13.) 

" The Rubric, on the deposition of Frederic II. 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 1 37 

in the council of Lyons, asserts, that 'the Pope may 
dethrone the emperor for legitimate causes.' Papa 
imperatorem deponere potest ex causis legitimis. 
(Lib. xi. tit. 13. cap. 2. Hallam, vol. ii. p. 288.)" 

The historian proceeds: " two principles are laid 
down in the Decretals— that an oath disadvantageous 
to the church is not binding! and, that one extorted 
by force is of slight obligation, and may be annulled 
by ecclesiastical authority. As the first of those 
maxims gave the most unlimited privilege to the 
popes, of breaking all faith of treaties which thwarted 
their interest or passion — a privilege which they con- 
tinually exercised; so the second was equally conve- 
nient to princes weary of observing engagements 
towards their subjects or neighbours. Thus, Ed- 
ward I. sought, at the hands of Clement V. a dispen- 
sation from his oath to observe the great statute 
against arbitrary taxation." 

' Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam prae- 
stitum non tenet. (Decretal, lib. xi. tit. 24, cap. 27. 
Et Sext. lib. i. tit. 11, cap. 1.) A juramento per 
metum extorto ecclesia solet absolvere, et ejus 
transgressores, ut peccantes mortaliter, non punien- 
tur. (Eod. lib. et tit. cap. 15.) ' The whole of this 
title in the Decretals upon oaths, seems to have given 
the first opening to the lax casuistry of succeeding 
times.' (Hallam, vol. ii. pp. 296, 297.) He adds, 
that ' it was in conformity with this sweeping prin- 
ciple of ecclesiastical utility, that Urban VI. made 



138 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

the following solemn and general declaration against 
keeping faith with heretics? { It being understood/ 
says the pope, ' that confederations of this order, 
leagues and bonds, or conventions, made with here- 
tics or schismatics of this kind, after they have become 
such, are rash, illicit, and, in their nature, null, even 
though they should have been made before the lapse 
of the party into heresy or schism ; however they 
may be confirmed by oath, or by faith pledged, or 
corroborated by apostolic confirmation, or any other 
confirmation whatever, after they have become schis- 
matics, as aforesaid.' (Rymer, tit. 7. p. S52.) 

Those things meet us in open day ; we have on 
record * A petition of the Roman Catholic archbishop 
and clergy of the archdiocese of Tuam, at visitation 
assembled,' thus beginning : ' Your petitioners beg 
leave to impress upon your honourable house, that 
the Catholics of Ireland have loudly, repeatedly, and 
unanimously proclaimed their detestation of the tithe 
system, as fraught with injustice in principle and cru- 
elty ; and that they should not be content until they 
achieved its utter annihilation.' 

What can be done with such men ? By what con- 
ceivable obligation can they be bound ? We actually 
had the words of their bishops in full contradiction 
of every point of this petition. On the 7th of No- 
vember, 1826, one of them in his deliberate evi- 
dence, and on oath, before the Irish Education 
Commissioners, thus spoke : ' As to the dignita- 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 139 

lies of the church, we never shall refuse to acknow- 
ledge their titles, pre-eminence, civil jurisdiction, and 
temporalities. They are possessions and titles which 
we conceive the state can confer, and the state can 
take away ; and, following the counsel of St. Paul 
we shall never refuse to give " honour to whom 
honour is due, tribute to whom tribute, and fear to 
whom fear." ' But this was before the Emancipation 
Bill. 

Is it possible to conceive that the men who said 
this, could consider themselves authorised to take the 
titles of the Protestant church, pronounce the tempo- 
ralities altogether detestable, and call upon their 
flock to join them in extinguishing the Establishment 
at a blow, as an incumbrance to the nation ? 

The highest names of the Romish clergy cannot 
resist this calamity of their position. Dr. Murray, 
who now calls himself Archbishop of Dublin, has, 
within a few weeks (May 24,) sent his subscription to 
the O'Connell fund, with a letter, expressly stating 
his object to be political. ' My dear Sir, the enemies 
of religion will not, it seems, allow the clergy to stand 
aloof the mere spectators of the struggle which is now 
going on to obtain justice for Ireland.' The letter 
proceeds to state, that the clergy have thus been 
'forced to take a share in the just, but peaceful pro- 
secution of the contest ; * adding, ' that the refusal 
of a large portion of the population to stain them- 
selves with the guill () f apostacy, is put forward as a 



110 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

just and sufficient cause why the whole country 
should be held in a state of political degradation.' 
Will it be believed, that this is the same Dr. Murray 
who, in 1834, as president of a meeting of Roman 
Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland, adopted, 
among other resolutions of a similar tendency, the 
following : — 

" Resolved, that we do pledge ourselves on our 
return to our respective dioceses, to remind our 
clergy of the instructions in our pastoral address of 
the year 1831, and to recommend to them most ear- 
nestly to avoid in future any allusion at their altars 
to political subjects, and carefully to refrain from 
connecting themselves with political clubs, acting as 
chairman or secretary at political meetings, or moving 
or seconding resolutions on such occasions ; in order 
that we exhibit ourselves in all things in the charac- 
ter of our sacred calling, as ministers of Christ, and 
dispensers of the mysteries of God.' 

Has this language been adopted in practice ? "We 
find the individual who published it as the rule of his 
church, now leading the way as a subscriber to a 
purpose notoriously political. We find the example 
largely followed ; the Romish priesthood busy in all 
the political movements of the hour ; active at elec- 
tions ; haranging from their altars ; directing and 
denouncing, with an indefatigable intrigue and a 
daring violence, worthy of the most ambitious days 
of popery. 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 141 

Wc ask, wheat compact can be made with such 
principles ? How can we negociate, where the only 
vow kept is one of perpetual hostility ? We ask, what 
additional grievances have the Roman Catholic body 
suffered since 1829 ? What breach of that engage- 
ment ? What restriction on their altars ? has not 
almost every year been marked by the rash concession 
of some new demand ? Or is there a stronger realiza- 
tion in all political history of the boldest fiction of 
the poet, than this rebel spirit, let loose from his 
penal chains and darkness, only to spread new rebel- 
lion ; more malignant at every advance into light and 
air; and even when standing in the central spot of 
freedom, and under the broadest sunshine of the 
constitution, lifting up his voice only to tell it ' how 
he hates its beams ? ' 

Nor is it possible for them to escape under the 
vulgar subterfuge of parliamentary interpretation. 
Without more than alluding to the opinions of the 
framers of the bill, who describe the l oath ' as a 
' principle, which must not be run counter to in any 
manner whatever : ' — what is the language of their 
most distinguished and eloquent advocate, Lord 
Brougham? In his speech of the 24th of April, 
1826, he thus expressed his sense of the object and 
obligation of the Roman Catholic oath of 1793, the 
same with the present one : — 

1 What are the oaths now universally taken by the 
Irish Catholics ? they are the strongest that language 



142 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

can convey. I defy the wit of man to devise more 
ample pledges of attachment to the establishment, as 
a political institution. They are couched in the very 
words which the most zealous Protestant would be 
forward to use for the purpose of displaying, nay, 
making a display, of his loyalty to the church. In 
truth, they are the oaths invented by yourselves, as 
sufficient to satisfy your anxiety for the church, to 
disarm your fears for her security. They are the 
oaths by which you intended to obtain all the 
safeguards that swearing and declaring can give.' 
In another portion of his speech, he says ' to the 
Protestant church they pay, without a murmur, the 
tithe of all they have, though to them it can by no 
possibility afford any spiritual succour. They bind 
themselves by oaths and solemn declarations to sup- 
port both church and state ; and abjure, in the sight 
of God and man, every feeling inconsistent with the 
safety and interest of both.* 

Not to multiply instances, another of their advo- 
cutes, Dr. Lushington, in 1829 observed, in reference 
to the present oath, when before parliament, ' No 
man can doubt the meaning of the words, ' I will 
defend, to the utmost of my power, the settlement 
of property within the realm.' Those words include 
every description of property, not only as relates to 
a court of law, but also in the common sense of 
every man whatever. Therefore the words are suffi- 
cient to all intents and purposes.' And again, in the 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 1 U> 

debate of the 8th of February, 1833, in answer to 
the quibble of a member, who said that, in inter- 
fering with the Protestant Church in Ireland, he 
only meant interfering with its temporalities, Dr. 
Lushington thus gave his distinct opinion, ' I think 
that every Catholic member of Parliament, when he 
enters the house, takes at the table an oath, the 
words of which ought to make an impression, on his 
mind, never to be shaken.' He then read the form 
of the Roman Catholic oath to the house, and said, 
' Others may be more ingenious in scanning the ex- 
tent of an oath, but I understand its plain meaning 
to be, that the Catholic members shall not lend them- 
selves to any attempt which will either weaken, sub- 
vert, or destroy the Protestant church establishment." 
I shall give but one example more ; it shews the per- 
severance in this desperate system, for it is of so late 
a date as the 24th of November, 1836; the re- 
solutions of the Irish Association, passed on that 
day. 

* Resolved, that it is incompatible with the princi- 
ples of religious liberty, that any man should be 
compelled to pay for the ordinances of a church with 
which he is not joined in communion. 

1 Secondly — Resolved, that, as under the present 
appropriation of the tithe composition, a tribute is 
levied from the whole nation for the uses of the 
church of only one tenth portion of the community, 
the people of Ireland are, therefore, justified in de- 



144 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES. 

manding the total extinction of an assessment so ap- 
plied. 

* Thirdly — Resolved, that, in our opinion, no set- 
tlement of the tithe question can give satisfaction to 
the people of Ireland, which is not founded on the 
foregoing principles.' 

Let those resolutions be placed side by side with 
the Roman Catholic oath ! they were moved by 
Mr. O'Connell ; declaring that he never rose with 
greater pleasure in his life than for the purpose ! 

If the Scriptures are true, which pronounce Satan 
the father of lies and of liars, of what genealogy is 
language like this ? In the name of common sense, 
how long are we to suffer those intrigues ? In the 
name of British freedom, how long are laws to be 
made for Protestants by Popish legislators ? In the 
insulted name of the God of truth and justice, how 
long is our religion to be held at the mercy of a 
system begotten in delusion, brought forth in iniquity, 
and maintained by the fearless dissolution of every 
tie that binds man to man ! So said not the heathen, 

' Sed mihi vel Tellus, optem, prius ima dehiscat, 
Vel Pater Omnipotens adigat me Murine ad umbras, 
Pallentes umbras Erebi, noctemque profundam, 
Ante, Pudor, quam te violo, aut tua jura resolvo.' 

But, one oath has been sworn, which will be pro- 
foundly kept : the oath to the utter ruin of Protes- 
tantism in the realm. The tragedy of the church in 
Ireland is plainly but the rehearsal of the tragedy in 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 145 

England and Scotland. There are two ways of des- 
troying a church : by storm and by sap. But the 
people of England could not be tried by the for- 
mer ; they would not suffer persecution to go forth, 
showering its fire-brands through their households. 
The method by sap may be the more tardy, but it is 
the more secure : it destroys the Church by the 
peril of its property. This invention is not wholly 
due to the papacy ; it is a leaf from the old 
volume of paganism. Julian* the Apostate's was 
the original genius, which discovered this mode 
of slaying religion without the mark of blood. He 
saw that martyrdom spread the church ; but he 
knew that no man will educate his son for famine. 
He acted on his principle : he suffered the scaffolds 
to moulder, but he seized the revenues, Thus, 

* Julian, according to this principle, which even Gibbon pronounces 
to have been ' pregnant with mischief and oppression,' transferred to 
the pagan pontiffs the revenues granted to the Christian church by Con- 
stantine and his sons. The system of clerical honours and immunities 
was levelled to the ground ; money was prohibited to be left to the 
church by will ; and the Christian priesthood were confounded with the 
lowest class of the people. An additional blow was levelled at their 
education. The Christians were prohibited from keeping schools, which 
was a virtual prohibition of all education, for it was notorious that they 
would not go to the schools of the pagan. Gibbon concludes by saying, 
that ' Julian had reason to expect that, in the space of a few years, the 
church would relapse into its primeval simplicity, and that the theolo- 
gians, who possessed an adequate share of the learning and eloquence of 
the age, would be succeeded by a generation of blind and ignorant fana- 
tics, incapable of defending the truth of theii own principles, or of expos- 
ing the various follies of polytheism." Julian, after a reign of but twen- 
ty-two months, fell in battle. 

L 



146 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

the church and the living generation must have 
gone down together to the grave. The invention 
was matchless ; but the hand of God cut short the 
inventor, and his legacy was left for the benefit of 
Christians ! to come ! 

The sources of religion are above human property. 
But a permanent property is essential to a permanent 
Church. Pauperize the clergy, and you expose them 
to the ignorance, the passions, and the corruptions 
of poverty. You do worse ; you shake their doctrine ; 
for who can rely on the stability of doctrine, where 
the preacher must look to popularity for bread. Mulct 
the Church, and you degrade it into a dependent on 
national caprice ; confiscate, and you ruin. Pure re- 
ligion will pass away with it into other lands. It may 
retain a show of existence here ; but cut off the roots, 
and the fall of the stately tree is as sure, as if the 
axe had severed the trunk. Insects and reptiles may 
cling to it, and feed upon its decay : but all the nobler 
tenants of its branches will be gone upon the 
wing. 

But what must be the national results ? The mis- 
fortune of English opinion is, that long prosperity 
has rendered it comparatively unconscious of danger. 
A hundred and fifty years of security have made it 
contemptuous of all menace. But is it not to be 
remembered, that within the fifty years before, the 
constitution was once wholly overthrown ; and once 
saved only by the extraordinary chance of finding a 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 147 

champion of liberty and religion in the house of the 
tyrant and bigot, and a warrior in the feeblest state 
of Europe ? 

1 Jmperium iisdem artibus optime retinetur quibus 
initio partum est.' The profound maxim of the 
Roman politician is marked on the history of every 
rising, and of every falling empire — ' The vigour 
which attained, must sustain.* If the strength of 
England is invincible, it is only so when on its guard 
— the giant reposing in the arms of dalliance will 
awake only to find himself sightless, shorn of his 
strength, and a drudge and a scoff for life to the 
bitterest of his enemies. 

But " the character of the people will be our pro- 
tection ! " History, even the history of the people of 
England, corrects this error. Nothing is so fluctu- 
ating as national character. In the conflicts of Eng- 
land, from the Wars of the Roses, down to the ex- 
pulsion of James the Second, it has taken every 
contradictory hue ; it has been alternately daring 
and submissive, bigoted and pious, rebellious and 
loyal : — like the ocean, vast and resistless ; like the 
ocean, reflecting in the calm all the lights and glories 
of nature ; but like it, swaying before every gust, 
and assuming at once the fury and the darkness of 
the storm. 

But, ' thank God, we have lords ! ' — Every honour- 
able bosom in England must echo the thanksgiving. 
The peerage have nobly done their duty ; yet they 

l 2 



148 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

are but men. " Put not your trust in princes," was the 
languageof one of the wisest of men, himself a prince. 
The lords failed once ; they may fail again : every art 
will be tried to shake, divide, and terrify them; if 
they give way but for an hour, all gives way along 
with them. Is this to be the confidence of the 
British empire ? 

A year of popish supremacy would effect all that 
popery ever desired — the total subversion of church 
and state ; full vengeance on all that had repressed its 
ambition ; exile, confiscation, and death, for its par- 
ticular enemies ; ruin for Protestantism and the con- 
stitution. 

It is easy to register the progress of that triumph ; 
we have only to trace its steps over the face of any 
country of modern Europe ; France, Germany, Spain, 
the Netherlands. But the Irish Protestants would 
inevitably be the first victims : they have been guilty of 
three hundred years of loyalty ; of an unbroken adher- 
ence to English connexion ; of fertilising and civilising 
their portion of Ireland into the loveliness and quiet 
of England itself ; of the pure forms of Christianity. 
They must be prepared for the last extremity ; they 
must either fight or fly ; they have sinned too deeply 
to be forgiven. 

But, with Ireland in popish hands, what could save 
England ? The nation would be already divided ; the 
papist would have only to affect a neutrality, and hold 
back; to see the empire bleed to death by the abscision 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 149 

of Ireland. Yet, will there be no temptation to more 
daring measures ? Are we prepared to contemplate 
the march of popery, under the civil banner of some 
future cabinet erected by itself, and ready alike to 
lead its triumphs as a traitor, aid them as a conspira- 
tor, or follow them as a slave ? Have we no fears of 
the loose population of Ireland rolling on our shore ? 
they could spare a million ! We have resisted the 
world, but it was with the constitution on our side ; 
what could be our resistance, with the constitu- 
tion against us, our valour branded as treason, and 
the scaffold before our eyes ? 

Such are some of our dangers. Still, if we have 
evils to meet, we have manly support in the sympa- 
thies of all that is pure, even in the varied religious 
bodies of the empire. The language of the honour- 
able baronet (Sir G. Sinclair) who has just addressed 
you on the subject of the Scottish Church, shews 
the feeling of that important body. "We have it 
further declared, in the published language of its first 
official authority, its moderator — a divine whose 
merits do honour to his church — that, if the establish- 
ment in Scotland has taken a political turn, it has 
been compelled by the necessities of the time. * With 
the exception,' says Dr. Macleod, ' of a very few in- 
dividuals, all the clergy of the Church of Scotland 
have ranged themselves on the conservative side of 
politics, determined to resist the dangers that seem to 
threaten their most valued institutions.' 



150 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES, 

* Under the present aspect of public affairs, and 
viewing with alarm the measures of government to- 
wards our sister establishments, and their apathy to 
the fearful destitution of religious instruction which 
exists in our own land, we should deem it a derelic- 
tion of duty to remain in a state of real or apparent 
neutrality.'* 

If you are deceived in this traffic of your religious 
liberty against your fears, never was a people more 
contemptuously deceived. Your enemies speak with 
the plainness of sure ascendency. You 'conciliate,' and 
call your concession a settlement. They laugh at your 
conciliation as a sign of terror, and call your concession 
an * instalment.' Every weapon that you lay at their 
feet in sign of your zeal for peace, is openly added to 
their armoury, in preparation for war. With an 
arrogance which, in other times, would have been 
pronounced treason, they threaten to divide your 
empire ; and if the menace is still unperformed, it is 
checked only by the rising hope, that they will yet 
have possession of the whole. 

But if you may trifle with rights and religion, you 
cannot concede men : the Protestants of Ireland will 
not be conceded by you. They are the sons of 
English freedom in its hardiest days ; and they re- 
tain the hardihood of that noble ancestry, invigorated 
and made vigilant by living perpetually in sight of 

* Letter, Edinburgh, May 31, 1837. 



AND PROTESTANT SECURITIES. 151 

the popish border. Those you may crush, but you 
cannot conciliate them away. It will not be a negoci- 
ation ; it must be a slave-trade. 

But one word more. The established clergy have 
been charged with a fondness for obsolete abuses. 
This is a calumny. There is no body of men in the 
empire more willing to adopt, nay, to lead, the most 
vigorous career of improvement. But they cannot 
discover improvement in the violation of justice ; nor 
will they bow down to robbery in the mask of re- 
ligious reform. If the state, or the church, have in- 
firmities, there are no men more desirous of seeing 
them healed. But they would approach both with 
the reverence due to the couch of a parent ; they 
would not see them, like the bodies of criminals, flung 
on the dissecting-table, to glut a savage curiosity, or 
teach apprentice-statesmen how to mangle. There 
are no men to whose uses, happiness, and natural 
zeal for the great establishment of England, all na- 
tional advance has a higher value. But they rightly 
distrust and disdain all reform, whether religious or 
political, generated of other parentage than truth and 
honour. Whatever countenance the child may wear, 
it will have the hereditary disease in its frame ; 
* Ignavi ex ignavis.' Constitution never grew out of 
conspiracy. Reform, to be salutary, must be the 
reverse of local, temporary, or subservient to party 
objects. It must be principled ; it must be gradual ; 
it must be as much above the little grasp of faction, 



152 ROMAN CATHOLIC PLEDGES. 

as the sun is above the reach of man. Like that lu- 
minary, it must be a work of the highest beneficence, 
guided by the highest wisdom ; a great necessity of 
moral nature, enlightening the darkness of the nation 
without disturbance ; and, as it moves onward, calmly 
shedding fertility and life into the bosom of the land. 
It must not be a conflagration ; bursting on us at 
midnight ; involving the helpless and the confiding in 
hazard of life ; hailed only by the thief and the trai- 
tor ; and leaving no vestige of its progress but in 
its ruins. 



IX. 

ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 



The parting promise of our Lord to his Church, "Lo! 
I am with you to the end of the world," has been 
unanswerably realized in the continued existence of 
the Gospel. If it has sometimes been lost to the 
general eye, it has always been restored ; like a 
river plunging under ground, it has always continued 
its course, and often met the light of day again with 
additional force and volume. If it has abandoned its 
old channel, it was only to find a new and broader 
one, to fertilize an untried region, and reflect the 
shapes and splendours of heaven in a nobler and more 
tranquil expanse. It has never been absorbed ; and 
even in its final days of difficulty, it shall sink, only 
to rise again, and spread round the world. But a re- 
markable characteristic of those revivals of the Gospel, 
is, that they were in almost every instance by the in- 
strumentality of individuals. The great political move- 
ments of mankind are often as general as the movements 



154 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

of the ocean or the air ; a vast and unaccountable im- 
pulse suddenly urges the whole. But the revivals of 
religion in the East, in Italy, in Germany, in France, 
and, in England, were nearly all personal, — while all 
•was in spiritual slavery, an individual started forth, 
showing his broken chain ; while all was silence 
throughout the world, a trumpet sounded, summoning 
the soldiers of the faith to brace on their armour ; while 
the voice of the prophet had been unknown for ages, 
the voice was heard crying in the wilderness, that 
the " hour was come," proclaiming repentance, and 
preparing the multitude for the baptism of regene- 
ration. 

The apostles were commanded to go forth, not in 
the strength of human powers, not relying upon 
genius, eloquence, or authority, but in the strength 
of religion ; and they conquered, where the noblest 
powers of man would have been in vain. 

The command was given for all times, as well as 
for the apostolic age. While it declared, that the 
great work of God was not to owe its triumph to any 
vanity of man ; it also declared, that simplicity, sinceri- 
ty, and moral courage, qualities which may be found 
in every rank of man, however divested of the more 
showy gifts of nature or fortune, were appointed to 
achieve the hallowed and immortal successes of the 
gospel. No Christian can be suffered to shelter his 
indolence under the pretext, that he has not the 
brilliant faculties which influence the world. The 



ZUNGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 155 

mightiest changes that the earth has ever seen, were 
made by men whose only talents were love of truth, 
love of man, and love of God. The life of the first 
reformer of Switzerland is an illustrious example. 

Ulric Zuingle,* better known by his Latinized 
name of Zuinglius, was the son of a peasant in the 
Swiss valley of Tokenburg. He was destined for the 
church, and was sent successively to Basle, Berne, and 
Vienna, where he acquired the meagre literature 
usual in the fifteenth century ; in the eighty-fourth 
year of which, on the 1st of January, he was born. 
After four years residence at Basle, he was ordained 
by the bishop of Constance, on being chosen by the 
burghers of Glaris as their pastor. From this epoch 
commenced his religious knowledge. It occurred to 
him, while yet in the darkness of popery ; that to be 
master of the doctrines of Christianity, he ought to look 
for them, in the first instance, not in the writings of 
the doctors, or in the decrees of councils, but in the 
scriptures themselves. He then began to study the 
New Testament; and found, what all men will find who 
study it in a sincere desire for the truth, and in an 
earnest and humble supplication for wisdom ; that in 
it was wisdom, not to be taught by man. 

In this study he pursued a system essential to the 
right perception of the scriptures. Not content with 
reading the text, he laboured to investigate its diffi- 

* Myconius de vita Zuinglii. 



156 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

culties ; he studied it in the original ; and with so 
much diligence, that, to render its language familiar 
to his memory, he wrote out the entire of St. Paul's 
epistles, and crowded the margin of his manuscripts 
with notes of his own, and observations from the Fa- 
thers. As his knowledge grew, he was astonished to 
find, that some of those doctrines of the Romish 
Church, which he had conceived to be fixed as fate, 
were not discoverable in the New Testament. To 
clear up those perplexing doubts ; he peculiarly ex- 
amined the texts on which the canon of the mass was 
declared to be founded ; and by adopting the natural 
rule, of making scripture its own interpreter, he con- 
vinced himself of the feebleness of the foundation. 
He now passed on from discovery to discovery. He 
examined the writings of the primitive Fathers, the 
immediate followers of the apostolic age ; and ascer- 
tained, that they differed in a variety of points from 
the doctrines of Rome. From the Fathers he passed 
down to a general study of the later theologians, and 
found in some, denounced by Rome as heretics, the 
very opinions which he had been taught by his solitary 
labour of the scriptures.* In the works of Bertram 
on the Eucharist, he read opinions in the ninth cen- 
tury opposed to those of the papacy. In Wickliffe's 
writings he found fatal arguments against the invoca- 
tion of saints, and conventual vows ; and in those of 

* Hottinger. Hist. Eccl. T. 6. 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 157 

Huss the martyr, open and resistless reprobation of 
the tyranny of the papal power, and the temporal 
ambition of the Romish priesthood. To eyes once 
opened by the book of all holiness and wisdom, the 
delusion rapidly gave way on all sides. From the 
doctrines of the Romish church he next turned to its 
practice. 

In unaccountable contrast with the inspired de- 
nunciations, he saw the people bowing down to 
images, and attributing the power of miracles to 
pictures, statues, and fragments of the dead. 

He saw the scriptures, on one hand, proclaiming 
one Mediator, and him alone. He saw the papacy, 
on the other, proclaiming hundreds and thousands, in 
saints, statues, and bones. One Sacrifice, once offer- 
ed for all, " without money and without price," was 
the language of inspiration. A thousand, a million 
sacrifices every day, and for any individual who pur- 
chased them, was the practice of popery. " Be not 
lords over God's heritage," were the dying words of the 
apostle. • Be kings, conquerors, rulers of all na- 
tions,' was the maxim of those who declared that 
they held their sceptre in virtue of St. Peter's supre- 
macy. " The servant of the Lord must not strive," 
said the scriptures. * The servant of the Lord must 
strive, and hunt down, and chain, and massacre, those 
who will not believe that he is the supreme deposi- 
tory of the wisdom of God, the vicar of God on earth, 
the spiritual Lord of mankind, the opener of the 



158 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

gates of heaven, the sentencer of eternal misery, to 
whom he will,' was the dogma of Rome. 

It is one of the most admirable features in the 
character of Zuinglius, that nothing could urge him 
into precipitancy. Those truths were irresistible, 
yet he knew the hazard even to truth from rashness. 
He had a double distrust, first of his own mind, next 
of that of the multitude. He felt, that the eager- 
ness to throw off prejudices has sometimes been itself 
a prejudice ; and he determined to abstain from all 
public declarations of his sentiments, until they were 
unchangeable. To try them by every test, he kept 
up a private theological correspondence with a large 
circle of learned men; but in his sermons he avoided 
all dispute, and by a course which is perhaps, after 
all, the true way to shake error from its strongholds,— 
the simple preaching of the uncontradicted and essen- 
tial doctrines of Christianity ; he gradually softened 
the repugnance, and purified the corruption of the 
public mind. In this course he continued for ten 
years. 

But his career was at length to receive a more 
vigorous and defined direction. It would be pre- 
sumptuous to decide, that providence always over- 
rules the common chances of life in favour of-its most 
distinguished servants ; but the chief circumstances of 
Zuinglius's life were among the most fortunate that 
a preacher of the Gospel could have chosen. 

The direction of the opulent and highly -privileged 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 159 

abbey of Einsiedlen, in the canton of Schweitz, had 
been lately given to Theobald, Baron of Geroldsac ; 
a man of noble birth, who, after receiving an edu- 
cation more fitted for the noble and the soldier than 
the churchman, had become a monk. He brought 
with him from the world ideas superior to the clois- 
ter, and one of his first purposes was, to make his 
community entitled to literary distinction. Zuin- 
glius's character for intelligence reached him, and he 
offered the pastor of Glaris the preachership of the 
convent. Its opportunities of knowledge and literary 
association were so obvious, that Zuinglius accepted 
the offer ; though the people of Glaris were so 
much attached to him, that they kept their pulpit 
open for two years, in the hope that he might change 
his mind, and return. 

At Einsiedlen, Zuinglius found all that was still 
necessary to invigorate and accomplish his mind for 
the great work which that lay before him. The library 
contained the chief theological labours of the church, 
with a large collection of the Fathers, and of the leading 
restorers of learning in Germany. Among the monks 
too were some active and zealous minds, whose names 
are still distinguished among the Reformers ; and at 
their head was a candid and high-spirited noble, who, 
in an age of papal violence, had the manliness to 
encourage their enquiries, the sincerity to follow 
truth, and the singular intrepidity to reduce it to 
practice. Zuinglius had no sooner proved, that it 



160 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

was unscriptural to believe in the pardon of sins for 
money, than Geroldsac ordered the effacing of the 
inscription over the Abbey gate, ' Here plenary re- 
mission of all sins is to be obtained.' Itwasno sooner 
proved to him that the worship of relics was unholy, 
than he ordered the relics to be taken from the altars 
and buried. The nuns had hitherto read only the 
Romish liturgy ; he ordered, that they should be sup- 
plied with the New Testament. Their vows had 
hitherto been irrevocable ; he ordered that, while 
all conventual license should be strictly restrained, 
every nun should be at liberty to leave the walls, 
and marry if she so willed. Under such a governor, 
prudence alone was necessary to solid success, and 
prudence was one of the finest qualities of Zuinglius. 
In his two-fold office of preacher and confessor, a 
rash or ambitious spirit might have had great means 
of disturbing the general peace, by irritating public 
opinion. He wisely abstained from this hazardous 
and fruitless course ; left the prominent superstitions 
to be detected by the increasing intelligence of the 
people, and holily laboured to convince them only of 
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. 
Thus, without offending their prejudices, he en- 
lightened their understandings ; and having disclosed 
the pure and visible beauty of the truths of God, 
safely left his hearers to condemn for themselves the 
groundless doctrines, and tyrannical assumptions, of 
Rome. 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 1G1 

With the force of his strong and sincere mind 
turned to the great subjects of Christianity, he must 
have been in constant advance to a more vigorous 
conviction of the errors of the Popish system ; and the 
time must have arrived when that conviction would de- 
clare itself. But the piety of Zuinglius was the direct 
reverse of popular passion. It has been remarked, 
by one who knew human nature well, that a "re- 
former who seeks only improvement, applies to 
the higher ranks ; but that he who seeks only inno- 
vation, applies to the lower." By the course of so- 
ciety, all beneficial reform must be transmitted from 
the possessors of property, knowledge, and public ex- 
perience ; for, with the educated the instrument must 
be reason ; with the uneducated the instrument is 
always violence. 

The first appeals of the Swiss Reformer were to his 
ecclesiastical superiors. His addresses to the Bishop 
of Constance, and the Cardinal of Sion, pointed out 
for their correction the errors which it was in their 
power safely to extinguish ; but which could not, 
without public danger, be left to be extinguished by 
the people. 

' The revival of letters,' said some of those manly 
documents, ' has lessened the popular credulity. The 
people begin to blame the idleness of the monks, 
the ignorance of the priesthood, and the misconduct 
of the prelates.' 

* If care be not taken, the multitude will soon 

M 



162 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

lose the only curb capable of restraining its passions, 
and will go on from disorder to disorder.' 

f A reformation ought to be begun immediately ; 
but it ought to begin with superiors, and spread from 
them to their inferiors. 

' If bishops were no longer seen to handle the 
sword instead of the crozier ; and ecclesiastics of all 
kinds to dissipate in scandalous debauchery the reve- 
nues of their benefices ; then we might raise our 
voices against the vices of the laity, without dread- 
ing their recriminations. Yet a reform in manners 
is impossible, unless you first get rid of those swarms 
of pious idlers who feed at the expense of the 
industrious citizen, and unless you abolish those 
superstitious ceremonies and absurd dogmas, equal- 
ly calculated to shock the understanding of rea- 
sonable men, and to alarm the piety of religious 
ones.' 

The Cardinal of Sion was a man of talents, who 
had raised himself from obscurity into high political 
influence with the court of Rome. The strength of 
his understanding made him feel that his remonstrant 
was in the right, and he promised to lay the statement 
before the Pope. But the Cardinal was more a politi- 
cian than a priest, and he soon shrank from offering so 
obnoxious a topic to the stately and luxurious selfish- 
ness of Leo X. The son of the Medici had more en- 
grossing objects than the purification of the Church. 
Those were, to aggrandize his family ; to strengthen 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 163 

himself as a monarch by foreign alliances ; to distin- 
guish his name as that of the Maecenas of the age ; 
and adorning his city by monuments of the arts, in 
St. Peter's to build a temple worthy of the pride 
of a religion which claimed the supremacy of man- 
kind. 

But the period had now arrived, when profound 
study, continued interchange of opinion with the 
leading philosophers and divines of his country, and 
holy convictions, matured during many years, had 
fitted Zuinglius for the solemn and public commence- 
ment of his work of immortality. 

For this perilous effort, which required the hero- 
ism of the age of the martyrs, the great Reformer 
chose a prominent occasion.* The history of the 
Convent of Einsiedlen was a striking compound of 
the wild legends and fantastic miracles of the dark 
ages. In the ninth century, a monk of noble family, 
probably disturbed by some memory of the furious 
excesses of his time, had determined to hide himself 
from human eyes, in the most lonely depths of Switzer- 
land. The spot which he chose was even then called 
* The Gloomy Forest.' Here he built a chapel and 
a hermitage, and after a solitude of twenty-six years, 
closed his career under the daggers of banditti. A 
miracle was declared to sanctify his death. — Two 
crows, his only associates in the wilderness, flew on 

* Hartman Ann. 
M 2 



164 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

the track of the murderers, screaming round them ; 
until, in the market-place of Zurich, the popular sus- 
picion was fixed on the criminals, and the crime was 
finally confessed, and avenged. 

Pious curiosity was now attracted to the forest ; 
wealth followed curiosity, and a monastery rose on 
the foundation of the hermitage. A further miracle 
attested the good-will of the ' Virgin,' to whom, and 
to the ' Martyrs of the Theban legion/ the establish- 
ment was dedicated. — The Bishop of Constance, 
with some of the neighbouring prelates, had arrived 
to consecrate the convent ; when, in the night before 
the ceremony, the bishop heard superhuman voices 
chanting hymns in the church. His pious scruples 
started at the guilt of adding superfluous consecra- 
tion to that shrine which had been already declared 
holy by celestial homage ; and he next day refused 
to perform his function. He was, however, entreated 
so perseveringly, that he approached the altar : but a 
mysterious oracle pronounced in the ears of the ter- 
rified prelate, and the wondering people, ' Cessa, 
cessa, frater ; divinitus capella consecrata est' — ' For- 
bear, brother ; the chapel is divinely consecrated.' 
The rebuked bishop shrank before the supreme 
sanctification, and the multitude returned home, only 
to come back with the fruits of sanctity that monk- 
ism loves, to the altar thus conspicuously hallowed. 
The robber-nobility and tyrant princes of the tenth 
century, who had many an act of blood to atone, 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 165 

came to wash away their crimes by giving a portion 
of their pillage to the convent of Einsiedlen. In the 
spirit of a time which always combined temporal 
ambition with spiritual influence, the Abbot of this 
opulent establishment soon disdained the humble 
rank of a pastor, and demanded that of a sovereign. 
Under Rodolf of Hapsburg, the founder of the Aus- 
trian monarchy, the Abbot of Einsiedlen took his 
place among the princes of the ( Holy Roman Empire.' 
Where opulence and rank were thus fully obtained, 
sanctity could not be far. An image of the Virgin 
was soon discovered, more genuine than all the past, 
more wonder-working, and more productive to the 
sacred treasury. The glory of this wooden Empress 
of the Heavens, this healer of diseases, and extractor 
of money, beamed with undiminished radiance for 
nearly half the duration of the empire of Rome ; and 
even in the sixth century from her rising on the eyes 
of the faithful, her splendours had scarcely approached 
their setting. 

Once in every seven years the consecration of the 
chapel was solemnized with peculiar pomp. The event 
itself had been fixed in the Papal history by a bull of 
Leo the Eighth, and the details had been preserved 
for posterity in a volume entitled, ' De Secretis Se- 
cretorum.' It was there stated, to have been per- 
formed ' according to the Romish ritual in such cases 
made and provided ; the Saviour himself officiating ! 
and being attended in the ceremony by a host of 



166 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

angels, evangelists, martyrs, and fathers.' To give 
further evidence of which fact, says the record, our 
Saviour concluded the ceremony by striking the fin- 
gers of his right hand into a stone at the chapel- 
door.' The marks were worshipped, kissed, and 
prayed to by thousands of pilgrims, down even to the 
year 1802, when the stone fell, and the holy marks 
never recovered the disaster. 

On the festival of this c Consecration of the Angels,' 
Zuinglius ascended the pulpit. The concourse was 
immense, from the whole range of Switzerland, and 
every ear was turned to catch the panegyric of the 
6 Mighty Mother' and the ' Host of glory' that had 
descended to pour the oil of holiness on that chosen 
spot of the world. But a mightier strength, that 
was to break the power of the image, was there. 
With the sincerity and the zeal of a new apostle to 
the Gentiles, Zuinglius thundered on them : — 

f Blind are ye/ exclaimed he, ' in seeking thus to 
please the God of Earth and Heaven. Believe not 
that the Eternal, He whom the heaven and the 
heaven of heavens cannot contain, dwells especially 
here. Whatever region of the world you may inha- 
bit, there He is beside you ; He surrounds you, He 
grants your prayers, if they deserve to be granted. 
It is not by useless vows, by long pilgrimages, by 
offerings to senseless images, that you can obtain the 
favour of God — that you can resist temptation — re- 
press guilty desires — shun injustice— relieve the un- 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 167 

fortunate — or console the afflicted. Those alone are 
the works that please the Lord. 

' Alas, alas ! I know our own crime. It is we, the 
ministers of the altar — we who ought to be the salt 
of the earth, who have plunged the ignorant and 
credulous multitude into error. To accumulate 
treasures for our avarice, we raised vain and worth- 
less practices to the rank of good works, until the 
people neglect the laws of God, and only think of 
offering compensation for their crimes, instead of re- 
nouncing them. What is their language ? Let us 
indulge our desires — let us enrich ourselves with the 
plunder of our neighbour — let us not fear to stain 
our hands with blood and murder. When all is done, 
we shall find easy expiation in the favour of the 
Church ! 

1 Madmen ! Can they think to obtain remission of 
their lies, their impurities, their adulteries, their 
murders, their treacheries, by a Litany to the Queen 
of Heaven? Is she to be the protectress of all 
evil-doers ? Be deceived no longer, people of error ! 
The God of Justice disdains to be moved by words 
which, in the very utterance, the heart disowns. The 
eternal Sovereign of truth and mercy forgives no 
man his trespasses, who does not forgive the tres- 
passer against himself. You worship the saints. 
Did those sons of God, at whose feet you fling your- 
selves, enter into heaven by relying on the merits 
of others ? No—It was by walking in the path of the 



168 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

law of God, by fulfilling the will of the Most High, 
by facing death, rather than deny their Lord and 
Saviour. 

c What is the honour that you ought to pay those 
saints ? Imitate the holiness of their lives — walk in 
their footsteps— suffer yourselves to be turned aside 
by neither seduction nor terrors. 

' But in the day of trouble put your trust in none 
but God, who created the heaven and earth with a 
word. 

' At the coming of death, invoke no name but 
that of Christ Jesus, who bought you with his blood, 
and who is the one and only Mediator between 
God and Man ! ' 

This discourse struck at all the pillars of Popery 
at once ; absolution for money— pilgrimages — the 
worship of the Virgin — and the intercession of the 
saints. It was listened to in mingled astonishment, 
wrath, and admiration. Its effect upon the priest- 
hood was, to inflame in some instances the jealousy 
which no prudence of the pastor could have stifled ; 
yet of the monks, if some were indignant, many heard 
in it only the doctrines which had been the subject of 
long meditation among themselves ; in other in- 
stances, the conviction was immediate and complete, 
and pilgrims who had brought offerings to the shrine, 
refused to join in what they had learned to be an act 
of impiety, and took their offerings home. The 
great majority were awakened to a sense of their 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 169 

condition, and, from that hour, were prepared to 
abjure the crimes and superstitions of Rome. But, 
like the light that fell on St. Paul in his journey, 
the fullest illumination descended on the preacher 
himself. Others heard and acknowledged the voice 
of heaven ; but it was to the preacher that the words 
of God came with living power. From that day 
forth, he was no longer the same man. His energy, 
intrepidity, and defiance of the common obstacles 
of Christianity in the popular prejudices and the 
tyranny of the Popedom ; raised him thence- 
forth to the highest rank of the champions of the 
gospel. 

The mind of this great man, deeply imbued with 
Scriptural knowledge by his ten years' residence in 
his pastorship of Glaris, and further matured by his 
three years' enjoyment of the literature of Einsiedlen, 
was now prepared for the sterner duties of a leader 
of the Reformation. Through the advice of Myco- 
nius, a Greek professor in the school of Zurich, 
whom he had known in the convent, Zuinglius was 
chosen preacher in the Cathedral of Zurich, Dec. 4, 
1518; a memorable time — one year from the com- 
mencement of Luther's preaching at Wittenberg. 

In his new office, the preacher lost no time in 
giving evidence of his vigour. It had been the cus- 
tom, to restrict the Scriptural teaching to the Domi- 
nical lessons, portions of the text marked out for the 
►Sundays and Saints' days. Zuinglius declared that 



170 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

he would take the whole of the sacred volume, and 
explain it in succession, so that the entire Scripture 
might be made familiar to the people. He boldly 
overruled the objections which were made to this 
formidable innovation on the practices of the Roman- 
ists; and on the 1st of January 1519, the first day 
of his 35th year, he commenced his course of Scrip- 
tural lectures. From various motives, he was attended 
by a multitude of all ranks ; and he exercised the 
functions of a teacher of the truth with the ardour 
of a sacred servant, accountable to but one master. 
In his exhortations, he rebuked the prevalent crimes 
of all classes ; the partiality of the magistrates, 
the violence, licentiousness, and intemperance of 
the lower ranks; the national guilt in ambitiously 
espousing the cause of sovereigns for aggrandise- 
ment; and the old and peculiar crime of selling the 
services of their armies to strangers. 

He was fiercely threatened for this exposure ; but 
his fortitude never relaxed ; and he persisted in the 
plain and direct reprobation of every practice ob- 
noxious to Scripture. He was now described alter- 
nately as a partisan and a fanatic, as the prey of a mad 
enthusiasm, and the accomplice of dangerous designs 
against the state. But his sincerity, guided by his 
prudence, gained the day ; and all men, distinguished 
for honour and intelligence, were soon ranged on the 
side of the hallowed and intrepid preacher of the 
Cathedral. 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 171 

A striking instance now occurred, to give him a 
still stronger hold on the affections of his country. 

Leo the Tenth,* in his eagerness to build St. 
Peter's as a monument of his reign, had exhausted the 
Papal treasury ; and demanding that it should be filled 
up by the purses of the faithful ; he sent friars 
on missions to sell the forgiveness of sins. Those 
demands had been frequently made before, in the 
failures of the Roman exchequer ; though they had in 
general excited great opposition among the local 
clergy. The Franciscan Bernardine Samson, the 
missionary to Switzerland, now came on this un- 
popular message; and his own conduct, though 
personally adroit, was too strongly marked by the 
Romish modes of raising money, not to increase the 
unpopularity. He published a scale of absolutions 
for the poor and the rich ; six sous being the easy 
purchase of a soul of the former, while a crown was 
the price of the higher worth, or deeper depravity, of 
the latter. A nobleman of Berne is recorded to 
have made a single sweeping bargain of the divine 
grace for himself, his ancestors, and his vassals ! 

The friar, by the authority of Leo, (an authority 
claimed to this hour, and to the same extent) pub- 
licly declared, that the power of the pope had no 
limit in either heaven or earth — that at his disposal 
was the blood of Christ and the martyrs — that he had 

* Fra Paolo Storia del Concilio di Trento. L. 1. 



172 2UINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

a heavenly right to remit both sin and the penance 
for sin — and that the sinner would be the heir of 
divine grace, the * moment his money rattled in the 
missionary's box/ He proceeded, granting absolu- 
tion alike to individuals and states, pardoning sins 
alike past, present, and to come ; and selling bulls 
authorizing their fortunate purchasers, if harassed 
by a too strict confessor, to choose an easier one, 
who should release them from vows, absolve them 
from the obligation of oaths, and extinguish the 
guilt of perjury. The habitual effrontery of those tax- 
gatherers of the pope, had soon risen into a ludicrous 
contempt for appearances. On a crowd of the com- 
mon people pressing round this seller of the peace 
of heaven, he was heard to cry out in the open 
streets, " Let the rich come first, who are able to 
buy the pardon of their sins. "When they have been 
settled with, then the poor may come.' 

Zuinglius declared, in the face of papal ven- 
geance, that this traffic was a crime ; and he suc- 
ceeded in prevailing on his fellow-citizens to repel 
the Franciscan. He did more; he successfully ap- 
pealed against him to the deputies of the Thirteen 
Cantons, who happened to be then assembled at 
Zurich. The final result was, that the Franciscan 
was driven out of Switzerland. 

The history of the Reformation derives its value to 
us, not more from its noble display of principle, than 
from its instruction in the mode by which religion is to 



ZUINCLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 173 

be best recovered in a degenerate age. Thus we find, 
that the study of the Scriptures was the light that 
led the Reformers to knowledge ; and the knowledge 
of the Scriptures was the great instrument by which 
they broke the popish fetters from the public mind. 
We see all the preachers devoting their whole 
strength to making known the inspired word, and 
that alone. The Reformer of Zurich, a man ac- 
quainted with a vast range of the literature of his 
day, yet brought into the pulpit only elucidations 
of the Bible. ' On my arrival at Zurich,' he says, 
' I began to explain the gospel according to St. Mat- 
thew. My next labour was the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, in order to shew how the gospel had been dif- 
fused. I then proceeded to St. Paul's First Epistle 
to Timothy, which may be said to contain the rule 
of life to a Christian, and clear up the errors intro- 
duced into the doctrine of faith. I then interpreted 
the Epistle to the Galatians ; which was followed by 
the two Epistles of St. Peter, to prove to the de- 
tractors of St. Paul, that the same spirit had ani- 
mated both apostles. I then commenced the Epistle 
to the Hebrews ; as making known, in its full extent, 
the benefits of the mission of Christ. In all my dis- 
courses, I avoided indirect modes of speech, artful 
turns and captious arguments. It was only by the 
most simple reasonings, that, in thus following the 
teaching of our Lord Christ, I attempted to open 
every man's eyes to his own disease.' 



174 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

Zuinglius had been hitherto merely a local 
preacher of the truth ; but he was now come into na- 
tional collision with ecclesiastical power. His preach- 
ing had begun to produce its natural effects, more 
permanent, because less clamorous ; and more for- 
midable to Popery, because wrought in the hearts 
rather than borne on the lips of the people. About 
the year 1522, it was observed with sudden suspicion 
by the priests, that some of their flocks had given up 
the practice of fasting in Lent, and, — which was the 
unpardonable crime, — without the usual dispensation. 
A heresy which thus struck at the power of Rome 
must be extinguished ; the whip of persecution was in- 
stantly brandished ; the culprits were summoned 
before the magistrates, and were cast into prison. 
The Swiss Reformer now^came forward to defend his 
principles. In a tract on the ( Observation of Lent,' 
he laid down the unquestionable doctrines, — that with 
God mercy is better than sacrifice, — that Christianity 
has abolished all distinction of holy and unholy food, 
and that the true fast is that from sin. He shewed 
that Scripture and common sense alike left every one 
at liberty to fast or not, as he found it desirable to 
his pursuits, his health, or his Christian edification. 
After throwing into merited contempt the idea that 
one food is more acceptable to God than another, or 
that the soul is the holier for the stomach's receiving 
a fish rather than an egg, he founds his rule on the 
necessities and circumstances of society. * Let the 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 1 75 

opulent fast if they will ; it may form a suitable 
interruption to a life of habitual indulgence. But 
the workmen in your manufactories, the labourers in 
your fields, find in the hardships and privations of 
their lives enough to mortify the flesh. The Romish 
regulations for those fasts, were unknown to the 
majority of those very Fathers by whom they are 
said to be founded. They are still unknown to large 
bodies of Christianity throughout the world. The 
true purpose for which they were adopted, and for 
which they are sustained, — is, by the payment for 
dispensations, to raise a large revenue for the See of 
Rome/ 

The controversial war was now declared. Hugh 
of Landenberg, Bishop of Constance, published a 
rescript to his clergy, exhorting them to adhere with 
increased fidelity to the ' Mother Church.' His letter, 
addressed to the Council of Zurich at the same pe- 
riod, peculiarly desired that they would not suffer the 
ancient rites to be infringed. The Council, already 
awakened to the truth, answered this letter by a re- 
quest that the chief pastors of the diocese would have 
a conference to examine into the causes of the dis- 
sension. But Landenberg knew too well the peril of 
the enquiry, and declined the examination, He next 
wrote to the Chapter of the Cathedral, on whom the 
preacher was of course dependent, complaining of 
' certain innovators, who, stimulated by the madness 
of pride, pretended to reform the Church.' The 



176 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

Bishop's language was in the form which the wrath 
of Rome uses to this hour. ' Receive not as a re- 
medy this detestable poison; perdition for salvation. 
Reject opinions, which are condemned by the heads 
of Christendom. Allow them not to be preached 
among you, nor discussed, publicly or privately.' 

Zuinglius had not been yet named, but he was 
conscious that the blow was meant for him ; and he 
demanded leave of his Chapter to state the grounds 
of his opinion. The principle of the answer, with 
which he refuted the charge of heresy, was, that 
* the Scriptures alone are the great authority to 
Christians.' 

e The word of God,' says this holy and high-minded 
man, in one of those passages, whose truth is supe- 
rior to all eloquence, ' has no need of human sanc- 
tion. The Fathers of the Church did no more than 
reject the spurious Gospels, the work of feigned or 
unknown writers. Neither do we desire more, than 
to purify religion of whatever is foreign to it, — to 
deliver it from the captivity in which it is held by its 
enemies, — to dig again those fountains of living 
water, which those enemies have filled up.' 

' In defence of human tradition you say, that the 
writings of the first disciples of our Lord do not con- 
tain all that is necessary to salvation. You quote the 
text—" I have yet many things to say unto you, but 
ye cannot bear them now," (John xiv. 12.) But here 
our Lord speaks to the Apostles, and not to Aquinas, 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFOBMER, 177 

Scotus, Bartholus, or Baldus, whom you elevate to 
the rank of supreme legislators. When Jesus says, 
immediately after, " Howbeit, when the Spirit of 
truth is come, he will guide you into all truth" — it is 
still the Apostles whom he is addressing, and not 
men who should be called rather disciples of Aristotle 
than of Christ. 

' If those famous doctors have added to Scripture 
doctrine that was deficient, it must then be acknow- 
ledged, that our ancestors possessed it imperfect, — 
that the Apostles transmitted it to us imperfect, and 
that Jesus Christ the Son of God taught it to us im- 
perfect. 

* What blasphemy ! Yet do not they who make 
human traditions equal or superior to the law of God, 
or pretend that they are necessary to salvation, really 
say this ? If men cannot be saved without certain 
decrees of councils, neither the Apostles nor the 
early Christians, who were ignorant of those decrees, 
can be saved ! 

' Observe to what these doctrines drive you. You 
defend your ceremonies, as if they were essential to 
religion. Yet religion exercised a much more ex- 
tensive empire over the heart, when the reading of 
pious books, prayer, and mutual exhortation, formed 
the only worship of the faithful ! You accuse me of 
overturning the state, because I openly censure the 
vices of the clergy. No one respects more than I 
do the ministers of religion, when they teach it in 



178 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

its purity, and practise it with simplicity ; but I can- 
not suppress my indignation, when I see shepherds, 
who by their couduct say to their flocks, * "We are 
the elect, you the profane. We are the enlightened, 
you the ignorant. It is permitted to us to live in 
idleness, you must eat your bread in the sweat of 
your brow ; we may give ourselves up to all excesses 
with impunity, while you must abstain from all sin !' 

' I shall now tell you what is the Christianity that 
I profess. It commands men to obey the laws and 
respect the magistrate, — to pay tribute where tribute 
is due, — to be rivals only in beneficence, — to relieve 
the poor, — to share the sorrows of our neighbour, — 
and to regard all mankind as brethren. 

' It further requires the Christian to expect salva- 
tion from God alone ; in Jesus Christ his son, our 
Master and Saviour, who giveth eternal life to those 
who believe on him. Such are the principles from 
which, in the exercise of my ministry, I have never 
departed.' 

These expositions of doctrine have a value mea- 
surelessly beyond even their historical interest. They 
give us the sincere impression of the scriptures, as 
they stamp their immortal truths on the minds of 
men newly awakened to a sense of religion. We 
see how deeply and purely their wisdom speaks from 
the beginning to every man who will fully bring his 
heart to their study. In human science, the pro- 
gress is gradual ; every succeeding generation dis- 



rUlNGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 179 

cerns error in the midst of the brightest discoveries 
of the past. But here truth is developed at once, — 
the first generation acquires a knowledge not to be 
surpassed by the remotest that is to be born. If 
intellectual science rises, like the sun from the verge 
of the earth, by light on light towards the meri- 
dian, — spiritual science, like the light that heralded 
the birth of the Messiah, bursts upon us at once 
from the zenith, and fills the midnight with celestial 
glory. 

The papacy, until this period, had been content to 
watch the proceedings of the Reformers with a jea- 
lous eye. Leo the Tenth, busied with state intrigues, 
fond of the lazy indulgence of the throne, and, like 
all voluptuaries, disbelieving the power of any thing but 
pleasure or ambition to stir the energies of man, had 
listened with reluctance or disdain to the rumours 
of religious change in the north. The accomplished 
Italian, nurtured in the elegance of southern life, 
and surrounded with the arts in their day of splen- 
dour, looked with native and habitual scorn on the 
barbarian Swiss and German. But the day of indo- 
lence must at length be at an end; and Leo, startled 
by the stern remonstrances of the popish sovereigns, 
and by the justified alarm of the popish priesthood, 
was roused to final action. 

In 1528, Luther's forty-one propositions were de- 
clared heretical, and his writings ordered to be burnt; 
while to himself was offered only the alternative of 

N 2 



180 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

falsifying his doctrines, or being excommunicated. 
This act of tyranny was followed, in the next year, 
by the citation to the Diet of Worms ; where refusing 
to appear, he was put under ban, and declared an 
enemy to the empire, as ' a schismatic, a notorious 
and obstinate heretic, and a gangrened foe to the 
holy church." 

The war which broke out between Charles the 
Fifth and Francis the First, at the moment when the 
sword seemed about to fall on the necks of the re- 
formers; providentially put off the visitation, from the 
day of weakness till the day of strength. But minor 
persecutions by the hands of the prelates and local 
authorities vexed the church of God; and in 1523, 
Zuinglius had appeared before the council of his can- 
ton, and demanded to be heard in public conference 
in behalf of his doctrine, in presence of the deputies 
of the Bishop of Constance. 

Zuinglius now published his ' Seventy-six Ar- 
ticles.' They and the controversy are memorable, 
the former as being a masterly elucidation at once of 
the Reformed and the Popish principles of the time ; 
the latter as giving rise to a signal change in church 
government. 

The f Seventy-six Articles ' declared that — * It 
is an error, to assert that the gospel is nothing with- 
out the approbation of the Church of Rome. — It is 
an error, to esteem other instructions equally with 
those of the gospel, — The cause of the divisions of 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. J 81 

the church lies in the traditions by which the priests 
justify their riches, pomps and dignities. — The ob- 
servances enjoined by men do not avail us to salva- 
tion. — The mass is not the sacrifice of Christ. — The 
power arrogated to themselves by the Pope and his 
bishops is not founded on scripture. — The jurisdic- 
tion claimed by the priesthood rightfully belongs to 
the secular magistrates, to whom all believers ought 
to submit themselves. — The law of God has not for- 
bidden marriage to the clergy. — The celibacy of the 
clergy is one great source of licentiousness — Con- 
fession to a priest may be considered as an examina- 
tion of the conscience, but is not an act which can 
deserve absolution. — To give absolution for money 
is to be guilty of simony. — Holy writ says nothing of 
purgatory. God alone knows the judgment that he 
reserves for the dead. Since he has not been pleased 
to reveal it, we ought to refrain from presumptuous 
conjectures. — No man should be molested for his 
opinions. The magistrate should prohibit those 
alone which threaten the public peace.' 

The conference was attended by two hundred ec- 
clesiastics, and a great multitude of other persons. 
The Grand Vicar and the Intendant of the Bishop of 
Constance were present as his representatives, and 
addressed the meeting. But the most pressing in- 
stances of Zuinglius could not urge them to the 
examination of his tenets ; they spoke in general 
terms, and repeated the importance of avoiding all 



182 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

schism. The controversy was on the point of closing 
in this inefficient manner : when a complaint was 
tendered to the Council, of the arrest of a priest for 
denying the invocation of the saints and the Virgin. 
This act of violence excited loud remark, and the 
Vicar, in vindicating the act of his superior, acci- 
dentally said, that he himself had conferred with 
the priest, and brought him to acknowledge his 
heresy. Zuinglius, with equal boldness and saga- 
city, started forward at this unwary acknowledge- 
ment ; and demanded that the Vicar should state the 
reasons which had so suddenly converted the priest. 
The Grand Vicar now attempted to recover the false 
step of suffering himself to be thus drawn into a detail 
of his doctrine, and commenced a general harangue on 
the danger of disturbing the decisions of the Church ; 
Particular synods he declared to be unfit for settling 
doctrines ; general councils were the only instru- 
ments. ' The gift of interpreting the Scriptures,' 
said he, ' is a precious one, which God does not 
grant to all. I do not boast of possessing it. I know 
no Hebrew, little Greek, and though I know enough 
of Latin, yet I do not give myself out as an orator 
in the language. Far be it from me to erect myself 
into a judge in questions where salvation is con- 
cerned ; those only a general council can decide, to 
whose decisions I shall yield without murmuring.' 
But his vigorous adversary insisted on his original 
point. The Vicar and the Bishop's doctors answered 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 183 

only by quotations from the Fathers, the canon of 
the mass, the litanies, and appeals to the miracles 
still wrought by the Romish saints. Such answers 
Zuinglius threw into utter scorn. 

' What kind of unerring guides,' exclaimed he, 
' are those Fathers of the Church ? How often do 
they disagree ? What are not the differences of 
Jerome and Augustine, for example, on the most 
important principles of Christianity ? Look to the 
canon of the mass, is it not the composition of men, 
of popes and bishops, who were any thing but in- 
fallible ? The litanies of Gregory may prove that 
saints were invoked in his day. But do they prove 
that the invocation was grounded on Scripture ? If 
we are to believe, that the miracles attributed to the 
Virgin and the saints ever took place, who is to 
prove that they occurred by their intercession ? ' 

He concluded with this forcible and intrepid pero- 
ration : — 'You demand my submission to the decisions 
of your Church, on the plea, that it cannot err. 
Now, if by the Church you mean the popes and their 
cardinals, how dare you assert that it cannot err ? 
Can you deny that among the popes there have been 
several who lived in licentiousness, and surrendered 
their minds to all the furies of ambition, hatred, and 
revenge ? Men who to aggrandize their temporal 
power, have not hesitated to stir the subject into 
rebellion against his prince ? But how is it possible 
for me to believe, that the Holy Spirit could have 



184 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

guided men whose conduct thus seems to brave the 
direct commands of Christ ? ' 

' Or do you mean by the Church, the Councils ? 
Can you forget how often those Councils have accused 
each other of perfidy and heresy ? There is indeed 
one Church which cannot err, and that is guided by 
the Holy Spirit. The members of that Church are 
all true believers, united in the bonds of faith and 
charity. But that church is visible only to the eyes 
of its divine founder, who alone knoweth his own. 
It has no pompous assemblages, it dictates no decrees, 
like the monarchs of this world ; it possesses no tem- 
poral sovereignty; it solicits neither honours nor 
power ; it has one care, and but one,— to fulfil the 
commands of its Lord I ' 

The Popish advocates had no answer to this manly 
and scriptural appeal. And the Council recorded its 
decision — ' That Zuinglius, having been neither con- 
victed of heresy nor refuted, should continue to 
preach the Gospel as before ; that the pastors of 
Zurich should rest their discourses on the words of 
Scripture alone ; and that both parties should abstain 
from all personal reflections.' 

The conference was now closed, and the great 
question settled, which was to place the faith of 
Switzerland on its hallowed foundation. But, in the 
necessary ceremonial of publishing the decree, the 
clergy were again convoked on the same evening ; 
and the Grand Vicar, anxious to recover his ground, 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 185 

protested against the haste of the proceeding, and 
offered to refer the question to the doctors of some 
university ; answering the demand of making Scrip- 
ture the sole standard, by saying, that its meaning- 
was often so dubious, that a judge of Scripture itself 
was necessary. Zuinglius again rose, and repelled 
this thousand times overthrown subterfuge of Rome 
with noble sincerity. 

6 Scripture,' exclaimed this great champion of the 
truth, * explains itself, and has no need of a Romish 
interpreter. If men understand it ill, it is because 
they read it ill. It is always consistent with itself; 
and the Spirit of God acts by it so strongly, that all 
readers may find the truth there, provided they will 
seek it with an humble and sincere heart. Thanks 
to the invention of printing, the sacred books are 
now within the reach of all Christians ; and I expect 
the ecclesiastics here assembled to study them unre- 
mittingly. They will there learn to preach Chris- 
tianity, as it was transmitted to us by the evangelists 
and apostles. 

* As to the Fathers, I do not blame their being 
read and quoted in the pulpit, provided it be where 
they are conformable to Scripture, and provided they 
are not considered as infallible authority.' 

The effect of those conferences was irresistible. 
If the multitude could understand nothing else, they 
could understand that the doctrines which they had 
never dreamed of controverting, were actually 



186 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

denied, nay, sternly reprobated, by individuals whom 
they knew to be men of character, qualified by rank 
and leisure for the inquiry, of acknowledged learn- 
ing, and obvious ability. They heard general princi- 
ples stated, which are like instincts in the heart of 
man — the right of every human being to think for 
himself — the utter improbability that the God of 
justice and mercy would give a revelation of his will 
to all men, which yet none but the priest was in- 
titled to understand ; — the palpable absurdity of 
supposing, that, while every man is a creature of 
weakness, a body of a hundred, or a thousand, can 
be incapable of error — the gross inconsistency of de- 
ciding, that the gospel, one of whose glories and 
characteristics was, that of being preached to the 
poor ; should, in contradiction to the express words 
of its giver, have been preached only to the priest ; — 
or that, when God has given us faculties, and com- 
manded us to live by their exercise here, he should 
have shut up those faculties the moment they ven- 
tured to contemplate the mighty truths by which we 
are to live in the world to come ; — or that he should 
put this eternal knowledge, which is our eternal 
welfare, into the hands of the priest ; to be by him 
given out in what portions he pleased ; — or- that, 
having commanded the Scriptures to be searched by 
all men, he should yet contradict himself, and ordain 
that the gospel should be at the mercy of a chosen 
class, often not purer, nor wiser, nor more Christian, 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 187 

than others ; forbidding that the Scriptures should be 
searched, and in the hands of every man. But, the 
chains were now broken, the dungeon-doors opened by 
a superior hand ; and the people, like the imprisoned 
apostle, had now only to use their natural powers, 
and follow. 

Zuinglius had triumphed nobly, and the fruits 
of his success were rich and rapid. He had 
by this conference obtained the opportunity which 
he so long desired ; that of declaring himself in the 
presence of the great body of the clergy, and shewing 
with what ease the truth could put down the false- 
hood. His learned and holy habits had been long 
known ; but the dignity, and the Christian mildness, 
exhibited by him on this trying occasion, obtained 
new public homage. The reformed were proud of 
a leader who shewed, that neither in learning nor in 
intrepidity he would fail them ; the wavering were 
decided by his palpable superiority ; and even among 
the most prejudiced partizans of Rome, there were 
those, who acknowledged the force of unexpected 
truth, and turned to the study of the long-neglected 
Scriptures. 

But it had an additional advantage, of peculiar 
importance to the considerate wisdom of the re- 
former. It relieved his cause from the imputation 
of being the work of private influence, or personal 
enthusiasm. He was no more to hurt his own feel- 
ings, or those of others, by the appearance of stand- 



188 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

ing forth, a cleric, to resist clerics. He was now 
under the sanction of the state. His reform was 
henceforth the work of regular authority. His church 
was placed as he had always desired to see it, under 
the secular power ; and the tyranny of Rome was 
superseded by the mild majesty of the law. 

It is characteristic of the reformer's wisdom, that 
he had hitherto abstained from every practical attack 
on the Romish worship; obviously for the suffi- 
cient reason, that on the one hand he might avoid 
unnecessary offence to those who still adhered to 
Rome, and on the other, he might not give a 
cloak to the violence of the populace. In his col- 
loquies he had, without hesitation, confuted the 
leading doctrine of Rome, that the mass was an 
actual sacrifice of Christ ; yet he had not assailed 
the usual celebration of the ceremony. He had 
expressly denied the doctrine of saint-worship, yet 
he had not removed the images from their shrines. 
He safely left this result to the course of time, and 
to the truths inculcated by his powerful and indefati- 
gable preaching. 

The wisdom of this conduct was soon displayed, 
by the unhappy effects of its opposite in others. 
Some of the reformed at Zurich, imputing his for- 
bearance to want of zeal, commenced an assault 
upon image-worship. They began by publishing a 
vehement pamphlet, which they called, * The Judg- 
ment of God against images.' The effect soon 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 



transpired in the shape of a mob riot, in which the 
crucifix standing over the city gates was torn down. 
The offenders were brought before the council, and 
the matter was long debated. The question was 
delicate ; for an acquittal would have involved Zu- 
rich with the Roman Catholic Cantons, already 
sufficiently jealous of its reformed spirit. Zuinglius 
gave his opinion with his habitual manliness. He 
declared that images were not to be made objects of 
worship, they having been expressly prohibited by 
the Jewish revelation, and the prohibition not having 
been revoked by the second ; the accused, then, 
could not be found guilty of sacrilege. But they de- 
served sentence as culprits against the laws, for ' having 
committed the act without magisterial authority.' 

The council, to relieve themselves from this diffi- 
culty, summoned the neighbouring theologians to 
another conference. But no results followed, except 
to the prisoners, who, in consideration of their con- 
finement, were dismissed ; their leader, Hottinger, 
being banished from the canton for two years. But 
this was a sentence of death to the unfortunate exile. 
He fatally fixed himself in one of the bigoted can- 
tons, where his openness of speech again caused his 
arrest. On being asked his doctrine on the adora- 
tion of saints and images, he boldly pronounced such 
worship contrary to the divine law. The senate of 
Zurich interposed in vain ; Hottinger was condemned 
to the axe. From the scaffold he addressed the de- 



190 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

puties of the cantons, entreating them to join with 
Zurich, and to refrain from opposition to the reform, 
for which he declared that he died with joy. He 
then addressed the judges, for whom he prayed the 
mercy of God, and the opening of their eyes to the 
gospel. His last appeal was to the people, in words 
which only Christianity could have taught, and which 
expressed at once his charity, his courage, and his 
doctrine : — ' If I have offended any one among you, 
let him forgive me, as I have forgiven my enemies. 
Pray to God to support my faith to the last moment ; 
When I shall have undergone my punishment, your 
prayers will be useless to me ! ' Thus died the first 
Swiss martyr. 

The image controversy was revived, through an 
epistle of the Bishop of Constance vindicating images 
— by a distinction between idols, { which represented 
false gods ; and the images of saints, who had been 
since their death received into heaven.' — ' The ho- 
mage to whom, he pronounced, * was so far from 
criminal, that it nurtured piety.' 

Zuinglius now, no longer on his own account, but 
by command of the council, published a reply, of 
which the following sentences are a portion. 

c The law of Moses is express on the subject of 
images. Its declarations on that point have not been 
abolished by the gospel. 

* That law forbids not only the adoration of any 
God but the Eternal ; but it forbids the making of 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 191 

the likeness of any thing in heaven, earth, or the wa- 
ters under the earth ; and this prohibition extends to 
images of all kinds used for worship. 

' The extravagant impieties of idolators, and the 
abuses produced by image-worship among Christians, 
sufficiently prove the wisdom of the law. He who 
first placed the statue of a holy man in a temple, had 
certainly no other intention than to offer him as an 
object of admiration to the faithful. 

' But men did not stop there. The images were 
soon surrounded with a pomp, which impressed the 
imagination of the people ; they were transformed 
into divinities, and honoured, as the pagans honoured 
their gods. Their names were given to temples and 
altars, and chapels were consecrated to them in woods, 
fields, and mountains. How many men, in the hour 
of trouble, instead of invoking the Omnipotent, call 
upon men who have been dead for ages, whose vir- 
tues have placed them in the mansions of the blessed, 
but who can neither hear nor succour us ? How 
many Christians, instead of having recourse to the 
mercy of the Redeemer, expect salvation from some 
saint, the object of their superstitious devotion ? 

1 There are even some who attribute supernatural 
virtues to these images. To increase the veneration 
for them, they are sometimes kept concealed, and 
sometimes brought forth in pompous processions. 
Men consult them to learn the future ; and to such a 
degree is the credulity of the vulgar abused, that they 



192 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

are made to believe that those inanimate images have 
uttei-ed words, shed tears, and given commands. 
Look at the votive tablets that cover the walls of our 
churches ; is there one that testifies the gratitude of 
a Christian towards God, the dispenser of all good, 
or Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world ? 

' No ; it is to men, whose condition on earth was 
like our own, that they attribute the miraculous cure 
of a disease, or unexpected succour in the hour of 
danger, or a wise resolution taken in some important 
circumstances of life. Is this true piety ? No ; such 
superstitious worship only serves to enrich those who 
patronise it. 

1 If you would honour the saints, honour them, 
not by addressing prayers to them, which belong to 
God alone, — not by lavishing upon them offerings of 
which they have no need ; but by following their 
example.' 

This nervous and just appeal produced its solid 
effect, in the determination of the council of the 
Canton to reform the public worship. By a decree, 
dated 1524, it enjoined the removal, by all individuals, 
of those pictures and statues which had been con- 
secrated by themselves or their forefathers. Two 
magistrates visited the churches of Zurich, to see 
that the order was put in force. The superstition of 
the monks was still active, and it was declared that 
the images would resist this desecration, and spon- 
taneously return to their shrines. But the magis- 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 193 

trates proceeded in their work, and the credit of these 
inactive images sank prodigiously. The dethroned 
saints were laid up in a public hall, in order to be 
preserved. 

But the prudence of the Reformer and the Coun- 
cil was defeated by popular violence. It was loudly 
pronounced, that things so capable of being again 
made instruments of superstition should be destroyed. 
The pictures were burnt, the images broken, and 
thus some works of art were sacrificed, which the 
more intelligent Reformers regretted ; but whose 
sacrifice involved a much heavier calamity, in the 
offence and misrepresentation furnished by the act 
to the Roman Catholic cantons. 

Yet, for the time, the great reform proceeded effec- 
tually, because guardedly. The relics were taken 
from the churches, and interred secretly, to avoid 
disturbing the remaining prejudices of the people. 
The tolling of the bells for the dead, and in storms, 
with other superstitious ceremonies, was discontinued. 
The prohibition of images was not made a law 
throughout the Canton; it was more mildly de- 
clared, that the matter should depend on the vote of 
the people. Where the majority desired the removal, 
the magistrates were authorized to carry it into effect. 
The natural consequence followed ; the images dis- 
appeared. 

But a grand difficulty remained — the Mass. While 
this pillar of the Romish worship stood, all true re- 

o 



194 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

form was incomplete, Zuinglius, from the commence- 
ment of his career at Zurich, had openly declared 
himself against the continuance of a rite, which he 
had ceaselessly proved to be in direct contradiction to 
the letter and the spirit of the gospel. 

Scripture pronounces that Christ died once, and 
that his one sacrifice is sufficient for the sins of those 
who in repentance and faith seek for pardon. 

In direct opposition to this, Rome pronounces 
that the Mass is an actual sacrifice ; that this sacrifice 
may be offered every day, in every corner of the 
earth at once, ten times, or ten million times a-day ; — 
that it may be offered for money ; — that it may be 
offered for the dead ; — that it may redeem from future 
punishment men who never had a thought of repen- 
tance ; — that the actual body and blood of Christ are 
offered up ; — that they exist in what to the human 
senses is but a wafer; — -that the hundred or ten 
thousand wafers are each the whole and complete 
body and blood of Christ ; — that the priest can thus 
make his Maker, and that the people are commanded 
to worship as the Eternal God, what the priest him- 
self will acknowledge to have been but flour and 
water the moment before consecration ; and what to 
the eye, the touch, and the taste, is but flour and 
water still ! 

Zuinglius denounced the whole of this inconceiv- 
able delusion ; but, with his characteristic reluctance 
to urge the public understanding, he desired to limit 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 195 

his first changes to some alterations in the canon of 
the Mass ; allowing the priests to retain their vest- 
ments, and tolerating whatever ceremonies were not 
decidedly opposed to the spirit of religion. Circum- 
stances induced the Council to delay even those 
changes for a year. At the close of that period, the 
rapid intelligence of the public mind had prepared it 
for the more complete reform; and Zuinglius declared 
the necessity of the entire abolition. Yet even then 
no hasty zeal was suffered to interfere. The Mass 
was still performed. The law was limited to taking 
off the command, by which priests must solemnize 
the rite, or laics be present at it. It was thus gra- 
dually abandoned, until, in the year 1525, Zuinglius 
was empowered by the public will to solemnize in its 
place the Lord's Supper. 

His reform now required but some civil additions ; 
and they were effectually made. The chapter of his 
cathedral, by his influence, acknowledged the para- 
mount authority of the State, and the mendicant 
orders were suppressed. But in these alterations, 
so tempting to human cupidity ; the manliness, fore- 
sight, and justice of the great Reformer, were worthy 
of his religion. The property of the convents was 
not plundered, nor even alienated to the secular pur- 
poses of the state. It was kept together, and duly 
directed, more wisely and usefully, to the objects of 
public instruction in the Gospel and literature. The 
infirm members, male and female, of those establish- 

O 2 



196 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

ments, were retained in the possession of their cus- 
tomary emoluments ; but at their deaths their bene- 
fices and estates were devoted to the support of 
professorships for general and gratuitous teaching. 

The cells of a great adjoining abbey were turned 
into a seminary for the education of young ecclesias- 
tics; the nuns having been previously pensioned. 
The Dominican convent was made an hospital. The 
Augustine convent was given up to the reception of 
the poor, and of destitute strangers travelling through 
the Canton. The other convents were similarly em- 
ployed. The revenues were in no instance embezzled 
by the cupidity of the State, or of private persons. 
The great Reformer had in this preservation to con- 
tend with every bad passion of our nature, but he was 
at once sincere and prudent ; and he accomplished his 
work by putting the conventual property under the 
care of a responsible administrator; thus saving it 
from future plunder, and directing its employment 
to objects of the highest public utility. 

His next work was a system of public instruction. 
He had driven out the ancient superstition ; his busi- 
ness now was to prevent its return ; and this he knew 
was to be most effectually done by teaching the people 
to think for themselves. He revived the almost dead 
school of Zurich, brought to it some able professors 
of classical and Oriental literature, and established 
public lectures, chiefly in the Scriptures, which he 
justly placed at the head of all learning. He banished 



2UINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 197 

the old system of studying only the schoolmen, and 
made it the principal duty of the theological teachers 
to study the Bible in the original languages ; com- 
paring them with the chief versions, illustrating them 
by the commentaries of the Rabbins and Fathers ; 
ascertaining the customs and traditions of Judea, 
connected with the Scriptures ; and finally directing 
this knowledge to the general Christian improvement 
of the country. The theological lectures were given 
in the cathedral which had so long echoed the gloomy 
doctrines and wild reveries of monkery. The clergy 
of the city, and the students in divinity, were enjoined 
to attend them ; but the spontaneous will of the 
people brought crowds of all classes ; a taste for lite- 
rature was deeply rooted, and long after the great 
Reformer had passed away, men of professions the 
least connected with literature were to be found in 
Zurich, distinguished for classical and theological 
knowledge. 

The career of Zuinglius was now about to close. 
But it was still to be signalized by a triumph of the 
faith. In 1527, some districts of Bern, the most 
powerful of the Cantons, petitioned its senate for the 
introduction of the system established at Zurich, and 
for the suppression of the Mass. The senate were 
divided, but the proposal was finally referred to a 
council of the clergy of Bern, and the other states of 
the league. Some of the Cantons objected to the 
meeting, but it was at length held, and attended by 



198 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

names still memorable in the history of Protestantism ; 
CEcolampadius, Pellican, Collinus, Bullinger, Capito, 
and Bucer. On Zuinglius' arrival the sittings com- 
menced. The Protestant doctrines were proposed in 
the shape of ten Theses ; and they were so power- 
fully sustained by the learning and talent of the Re- 
formers ; that, after eighteen debates, the great ma- 
jority of the Bernese clergy signed their adherence to 
them, as the true doctrines of the Gospel. 

The ( Grand Council' of Bern then proceeded to 
act upon the decision. It declared the Bishops of 
Lausanne, Basle, Sion, and Constance, to be divested 
of all rights in its territory ; ordered the priests to 
teach nothing contradictory to the Theses; permitted 
priests to marry, and monks and nuns to leave their 
convents ; and appropriated the religious revenues to 
lawful purposes : within four months Protestantism 
was the religion of the whole Canton. But this tri- 
umph was finally purchased by the death of the 
great leader and light of Switzerland. The accession 
of so powerful a state as Bern threw the Ro- 
man Catholic Cantons into general alarm. A 
league, prohibiting the preaching of the Reforma- 
tion, was made between the five cantons of Lu- 
cerne, Uri, Schweitz, Unterwalden, and* Zug. 
Protestant ministers were persecuted, and in some 
instances put to death ; and alliances were formed 
with the German princes hostile to Protestantism, 
Civil discord inflames all the evil passions ; and the 



ZtilNGLIUS, 111 K SWISS REFORMER. \i)[) 

remaining enemies of the Reformation in Zurich 
and Bern laboured to represent the public distur- 
bances as the work of Zuinglius. He suddenly ap- 
peared before the senate, and tendered the resigna- 
tion of his office. ' I have,' said he, ' for eleven 
years preached the Gospel to you in its purity ; as 
became a faithful minister, 'I have spared neither ex- 
hortations, nor reprimands, nor warnings ; and I have 
declared to you on many occasions how great a mis- 
fortune it would be to you, that you should suffer 
yourselves to be again guided by those, whose ambi- 
tion is their god. 

1 You have made no account of my remonstrances ; 
I see introduced into the Council men destitute 
of morality and religion, having nothing in view 
but their own interest, enemies of the doctrine 
of the Gospel, and zealous partizans of our adver- 
saries. Those men are they who are now listened to. 
As long as you act in this manner, what good can be 
hoped for? But since it is to me that the public 
misfortunes are attributed, though none of my coun- 
sels are followed, I demand my dismission, and will 
go, and seek an asylum elsewhere.' 

This act of noble self-denial was received by the 
Council as it deserved. A deputation was sent, to 
entreat him to rescind his resolution. But they ob- 
jected political and personal grounds in vain. At 
length they laid before him the unquestionable injury 
that must be sustained by the Reformation, if it were 



200 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

thus to lose its principal champion in its chief seat, 
Zurich. To this argument Zuinglius gave way, and 
in three days after, appeared before the council, and 
pledged himself to adhere till death to the cause of 
his country. 

But the persecutions of the Protestants had awak- 
ened the fears and resentment of the Reformed Can- 
tons ; and to enforce the treaty by which they were 
to be protected, the Cantons of Zurich and Bern 
determined to blockade the five Cantons. The 
blockade was contrary to the advice of Zuinglius, who 
deprecated it as involving the innocent with the 
guilty. At length the five Cantons collected their 
troops, and advanced towards Cappel, a point chosen 
to prevent the junction of the Zurichers and Ber- 
nese. Zurich was thrown into consternation ; and 
when four thousand men were ordered to march, but 
seven hundred were equipped to meet the enemy. 
News now came that the division already posted at 
Cappel was attacked by a superior force. The officer 
in command of the Zurichers instantly marched to 
sustain the post It was the custom of the Swiss, 
that their clergy should follow their troops to the 
field, to administer the last consolations to the dying. 
Zuinglius attended this detachment, but with -a full 
consciousness of the hazard. ' Our cause is good,' 
said he to the friends who crowded anxiously around 
him, as the troops marched out ; ' but it is ill de- 
fended. It will cost my life, and that of a number 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 201 

of excellent men, who would wish to restore religion 
to its primitive simplicity. No matter; God will 
not abandon his servants ; he will come to their as- 
sistance when you think all lost. My confidence 
rests upon him alone, and not upon men. I submit 
myself to his will.' 

Cappel is three leagues from Zurich. On the road, 
the roaring of the cannon attacking the position of 
the Zurichers, was heard. The march of the troops 
was slow, from the height of Mount Albis, and the 
weight of their armour. Zuinglius, agitated for the 
fate of the post, urged the officers to push forward 
at speed. ' Hasten,' he cried, ' or we shall be too 
late. As for me, I will go and join my brethren. 
I shall help to save them, or we shall die together.' 
The little army, animated by his exhortation, rushed 
forward, and at three in the afternoon came in sight 
of the battle. The troops of the five Cantons were 
eight thousand, an overwhelming superiority. After 
some discharges of Cannon, they advanced to sur- 
round the Zurichers, who amounted to but fifteen 
hundred. The enemy were boldly repulsed for a 
while, but their numbers enabled them to outflank 
the Protestants, and then all was flight or slaughter. 

Zuinglius fell almost at the first fire. He had ad- 
vanced in front of his countrymen, and was exhorting 
them to fight for the cause of freedom, when a ball 
struck him. He sank on the ground mortally 
wounded, and in the charge of the enemy was tram- 



202 ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 

pled over without being distinguished. When the 
tumult of the battle was past, his senses returned, 
and raising himself from the ground, he crossed his 
arms upon his breast, and remained with his eyes 
fixed on heaven. Some of the enemy, who had lin- 
gered behind, came up and asked him whether he 
would have a confessor. His speech was gone, but 
he shook his head in refusal. They then bade him 
commend his soul to the Virgin. He refused again. 
They were enraged by his repeated determination. 
' Die then, obstinate heretic ! ' exclaimed one of 
them, and drove his sword through his bosom. 

The body was not recognized until the next day ; 
and then it was exposed to the sight of the Roman 
Catholic army, as the most consummate trophy. To 
some it was a sight of admiration and sorrow, but to 
the multitude a subject of savage revenge. In the 
midst of shouts over the remains of this champion of 
holiness and truth, the clamour rose, to ' burn the 
heresiarch.' Some of the leaders would have re- 
sisted, but the fury of the crowd was not to be res- 
trained. They dragged the body to a pile, held a 
mock trial over it, burned it, and scattered the ashes 
to the winds.* 

Thus perished a saint and a hero, at a time of 
life, when he seemed to be only maturing for a more 
extensive and vigorous career. He fell at the age 

* Gualth. Apol. Zuinglii. 



ZUINGLIUS, THE SWISS REFORMER. 203 

of forty-seven. But he had run his race well ; he 
had sowed the seeds of virtue in a land barren before ; 
he had poured light on a land of darkness, and his im- 
mortal legacy to his country was wisdom, freedom, 
and religion ! 



X. 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

John Philpot Curran was born on the 24th of July, 
1750, at Newmarket, a town in the county of Cork 
in Ireland. He was the son of respectable parents, — 
his father being the seneschal of the Manor Court? 
and possessing some knowledge of classical literature ; 
and his mother, a person remarked in her neighbour- 
hood for unusual ability. e The only inheritance,' 
their distinguished son said in after life, f that I 
could boast of from my poor father, was the very 
scanty one of an unattractive face and person like 
his own. And if the world has ever attributed to 
me something more valuable than face or person, or 
than earthly wealth, it was, that another and a 
dearer parent gave her child a portion from the 
treasure of her mind.' 

In 1769, he entered the University of Dublin, 
where he obtained a scholarship, and originally in- 
tended to study for a fellowship, an effort requiring 
a larger range of science and learning, than any other 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. U05 

Academic coarse of Europe ; but whose success, by 
fixing him in the Church, would have essentially for- 
bidden the distinction, or at least the species of 
distinction, which he afterwards so rapidly and con- 
spicuously acquired. But his temper or his indo- 
lence shrank from the preliminary labour, and he 
chose the bar. In 1773 he came to England, and 
entered the Middle Temple. After undergoing the 
usual struggles of an unfriended barrister for seven 
years, he obtained a seat in the Irish House of 
Commons in 1783, a period of remarkable public 
animation, and of not less remarkable public men in 
both countries. Curran's abilities placed him in 
the foremost ranks of opposition. He soon distanced 
all his contemporaries at the bar, in causes which 
required the display of eloquence ; and in the un- 
happy time of the popular troubles, he became the 
chief advocate chosen by the insurrectionary leaders. 
On the accession of his party to power, in 1806, 
by the death of their great adversary, Pitt ; Curran 
was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and a 
privy councillor. Valuable as the appointment was, 
he always expressed his chagrin, at what he always 
regarded as a party neglect; and in 1814 sent in his 
resignation. In 1817, he felt his health declining, 
and was advised to try the effect of continental travel. 
But he left Ireland, with a strong impression on 
his mind, that * he should never return.' The de- 
pression increased, and he complained of a * moun- 



206 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

tain of lead upon his heart.' On the 8th of Octo- 
ber, while still in London, he was attacked by apo- 
plexy, and on the 14th of October 18 17, he died in his 
68th year. His last hours were so placid, that none 
could mark the moment when he died. His remains 
were laid in one of the vaults of Paddington Church. 
Many anecdotes and characters of this distinguished 
person appeared in the various publications of the day, 
the following was sent, anonymously of course, to one 
of the journals ; from which it was subsequently ex- 
tracted, and published in the appendix to the very 
graceful and interesting ' Life of Curran, by his son.' 
In that appendix it is justly observed, that ' the 
writer was free from any political sympathy which 
could betray him into exaggerated encomium.' 

CHARACTER. 

** The public prints which announced the death of 
the Rt. Hon. John Philpot Curran, a few days since, 
gave many valuable tributes to the memory of that 
celebrated person, but they have left much more 
room than the present writer can expect to fill, for 
the detail of his extraordinary powers. 

From the period at which Curran emerged from 
the first difficulties of an unfriended man, toiling 
through a jealous profession, his history makes a 
part of the annals of his country. Once upon the 
surface, his light was always before the eye, it never 



( HARACTER OF CURRAN. 207 

sank and was never outshone. Yet, if office is success, 
he was unsuccessful. This was his destiny, but it 
might have been his choice, at least in his earlier 
period. He had the reputation, and he cared little 
for the robe ; he certainly was not without the re- 
ward, which to a bold spirit, conscious of eminent 
ability, might be more than equivalent to the reluc- 
tant patronage of the throne. To his feelings, legal 
distinctions might have been only a bounty on his 
silence ; his limbs would have been fettered by the 
ermine. But he had his compensation, in perpetual 
popular honours ; in much respect from the higher 
ranks of public life — much fear from the lower par- 
tizans, — unquestioned admiration from all. In the 
legislature he was the assailant whose lash was the 
most dreaded, — in the Courts of law, the advocate 
whose assistance was deemed the most essential ; in 
his peculiar style of eloquence, he stood alone, and 
shone alone. 

On entering parliament he joined the ranks of 
opposition, then consisting of men, with some 
of whom he had been familiarized from early life, 
others of them the chief names of his own pro- 
fession, and the whole body exhibiting a dis- 
tinguished superiority of talents over the Treasury- 
bench. Curran embraced the cause with all the 
ardour of strong feelings, powerful prejudices, 
and brilliant imagination. The historical aspect 
of Ireland was singularly calculated to lead such 



'208 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

a spirit astray. It was like one of those fine counte- 
nances which we find in Italian pictures, where the 
noblest expression of mind is tinctured with irrepres- 
sible melancholy. Her history had been an unhappy 
one. — Great talents and great opportunities continu- 
ally thrown away. — Religion issuing in persecution, 
loyalty in rebellion, the proudest fidelity only be- 
traying to the dungeon, and the most chivalric gallan- 
try perishing- on the scaffold. Even when her do- 
mestic feuds had exhausted themselves in the grave, 
and the powerful interposition of England promised 
to give the nation a breathing time of peace, a malig- 
nant destiny seemed to turn that peace only into a 
preparative for war. The well-intentioned policy of 
the superior state, — for nothing but falsehood or igno- 
rance can doubt the benevolent spirit of that noblest 
of all countries, — was too limited to operate a thorough 
purification, — strong enough to irritate, it was too 
weak to reclaim : it was the application of the cautery 
to a limb, when the whole frame was a gangrene. 

At a later period, in the commencement of the cen- 
tury, Ireland had undergone a revolution. But not 
pacific, like that of England in 1688 ; not one of those 
great beneficent changes which, like the ascent of the 
sun to the tropic, divide the times of nations, and 
announce the season of production. The Irish revo- 
lution had the storm without the calm, and the rain 
was blood. The people, by linking themselves to 
the throne of James, a dastard and a monk, were 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 209 

crushed in its fall ; and the precautionary measures 
essential to keep down the angry remnants of the 
rebellion, were felt less as the natural result of 
conquest, than as the revenge of a capricious and in- 
sulting tyranny. The steady government of Wil- 
liam should have been regarded as the most secure 
provision for national peace, by extinguishing the last 
hopes of the defeated dynasty — it stung the national 
feelings, as the last, cold contumely of power. 

Yet the effects of wisdom and steadiness in govern- 
ment are infallible ; like the influences of the air, how- 
ever acting by invisible means, they ultimately show 
themselves, by giving a new face to nature. Within 
fifty years Ireland assumed another being ; a new 
generation, with new habits, had succeeded to the old ; 
the final extinction of the Stuarts, long the mere effi- 
gies of royalty, suffered the people to turn their faces 
to the legitimate throne ; and, covering the past dis- 
content, like the bones of their ancestors, in the 
sepulchre ; they ran their plough through the ground, 
and gladly obliterated even the grave. 

But faction has neither eyes nor ears for the truth ; 
resolved not to be undeceived, it looked only to the 
historical aspect, while it libelled the living one ; 
and at the moment when every faculty of the people 
was receiving new vigour, commerce reviving in every 
port, and agriculture spreading through every quarter 
of the country ; when the professions were rapidly ac- 
quiring celebrity ; and manufactures, that most reluc- 



210 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

tantyet most unequivocal, proof of civil progress, were 
making their first entrance on the soil ; the orators 
of opposition were singing an universal dirge over Ire- 
land — an imaginary corpse, in a tomb constructed 
by their own hands. 

But, — as if for the punishment of a people weak 
enough to be cheated by the vulgar charlatanries of 
faction, and ungrateful enough to close their eyes 
against the singular bounties of Providence ; real 
evil suddenly came. The American war broke out. 
The northern portion of the island, inevitably connect- 
ing its principles in government with its discipline in 
religion, instantly took a strong interest in the strug- 
gle. This was a perilous period for the coun- 
try. Ireland was in the precise situation to be dan- 
gerously tempted. She felt possessed of a strength, of 
which she knew neither the limit nor the guidance. 
She had started from a long sleep, like the giant re- 
freshed with wine ; her natural powers doubly excited 
by an elating, but dangerous, draught of privilege. 
She had seen a hundred thousand volunteers in arms, 
and virtually wielding her sceptre. To consummate 
all ; her orators had filled her ears with perpetual 
denunciations of English sovereignty ; appeals, bold, 
brilliant, and inflammatory, to every passion which 
lies undeveloped in the bosoms of an ardent people for 
the benefit of political imposture, metaphoric wrongs, 
real and substantial treason. 

Yet it is the habitual folly of party orators 
to forget that parliament is not the nation. Ac- 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 211 

customed to feel triumph or defeat only in the 
echoes of the legislature, they gradually overlook 
that vast assemblage of interests and feelings which 
creates the legislature, and finally requires an ac- 
count of its creature. The true statesman addresses 
himself to the hearts of the people, and by them con- 
trouls the obliquity of the representatives; the charla- 
tan of statesmanship is content with the fluctuating 
plaudits of the house, floats on majorities and minori- 
ties, and finds himself at last left dry on shore. It is 
impossible to regret that the Irish opposition made this 
grand mistake ; for its motives were as selfish as its de- 
clarations were lofty. This mistake saved the country. 
The nation had grown weary of the opposition. 
They were disgusted with seeing parliament turned into 
a theatre, where a succession of candidates for salaries 
followed in a succession of displays for hire ; — a race 
of political pedlars, each coming with an assortment of 
wares which no man wanted, and whose only true pur- 
pose was to sell himself. They had rapidly discovered 
the insufficiency of a tribe of empirics, each more pre- 
suming than the one before, and each vaunting his 
panacea, only to fill his pockets. But a whig opposition 
is never thoroughly exposed, until it is in power. The 
day of office came, and the country felt the full inso- 
lence of a faction turned into a government. Another 
change came — the whigs were driven from power, 
and their fall was hailed with a general shout of the 
nation. The very men who had harnessed them- 
p 2 



212 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

selves to their triumphal chariot, would now, still 
more rejoicingly, have dragged them to the scaffold. 
The country extinguished the last vestiges of an 
administration, which it could not remember but as 
a national stigma. — Like the Roman multitude ; not 
content with dethroning the tyrant whom it once 
worshipped, it broke down every image of whig supre- 
macy, and flung the whole into the political Tiber. 

But the period which raised Curran to his highest 
eminence as an advocate, was of a darker hue. The 
hazards of Ireland were not yet at an end. The 
American revolution had grown calm, but it had given 
the dangerous example of a people throwing off the 
dominion of the mother country. The French revolu- 
tion now suddenly burst out ; giving the example of a 
populace throwing off the power of the oldest and 
proudest of European despotisms. If the blaze, 
three thousand miles across the Atlantic, had kindled 
the partizanship of Ireland ; what was the peril, 
when she saw close to her shores a conflagration 
which, consuming the French throne, threatened to 
cover Europe ? The power of the populace seemed 
thenceforth immeasurable and irresistible. The ex- 
periment was made without delay ; the northern 
portion of the island was again called on, and it 
answered the call. But the object was now of a 
fiercer order, and it must be sustained by a wilder 
force. It had once been reform ; it was now repub- 
licanism. The sword was to be drawn, not for 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 213 

fancied rights, but for actual sovereignty ; and once 
drawn was never to be sheathed until it had dis- 
membered the empire. For this guilty and compre- 
hensive design nothing less than the whole strength 
of the country must be employed. The population 
of the west and south, the descendants of the abo- 
riginal Irish, precipitate alike in their love and their 
hate, habitually reckless of danger, and filled with 
recollections of native supremacy, offered a vast un- 
tried body of strength ; all that was stately in the 
ancient clanship had passed away, but the connexion 
remained ; the superb barbarism and haughty chief- 
taincy had mouldered into dust before the light and 
air of British legislation ; but the sword of the pea- 
sant was preserved unrusted, and the arm that was 
to wield it was as sinewy as ever. The time was 
favourable for this capacious plan of massacre* The 
British government, with the French legions threat- 
ening in its front, must be comparatively unpre- 
pared for revolt in its rear. Party too embarrassed it at 
home. It is only an hereditary charge on the charac- 
ter of the whigs, that, never able to look beyond 
office, they openly exulted in the difficulties of the 
country, as increasing the difficulties of the minister ; 
that no public sense could wean them from petty in- 
trigue ; and that even when the storm seemed louring 
from every quarter of the horizon, they trafficked with 
the safety of the state ; as if the loss of Ireland would 
be well compensated by a transfer of their worthless- 



#14 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

ness to the cabinet. But when was whiggism ever 
magnanimous ? when was it ever but the largest pro- 
mise followed by the most meagre performance; 
virtue in verbiage, patriotism longing for patron- 
age, and self-denial grasping at salary. 

The attempt to combine the north and south, 
eventually ruined the conspiracy. Two religions 
which could scarcely bear to look each other in the 
face, could still less march side by side. The insurrec- 
tion in the north threw away its arms, and the south- 
ern revolt, thus left to struggle alone, was speedily 
put down ; though with a melancholy havoc of the 
country, and a still more melancholy sacrifice of the 
deluded population. 

In those allusions to a period which cannot be re- 
membered without pain, there is no idea of impeach- 
ing the general character of the people. Nature has 
seldom gifted a nation with nobler qualities. The 
crime be on the heads of those who deceived them. 
Ireland wanted the experience which time has since 
supplied to all nations. The world was to be older, 
before it learned the inevitable end of the reform 
which begins by blood. The French revolution had 
not yet given its moral. It was still a lofty and 
daring figure, with its deformities covered with its 
armour ; the fiery warrior, not yet sunk into the 
assassin. With the foundation of every throne shak- 
ing at its first step on the soil, it was impossible 
to refuse it at least the fearful homage which we pay 
to resistless strength and triumphant ambition. It is 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 215 

unquestionable that the general delusion went further, 
and that, to the eyes of the continent, it was still, 
like the primal vision of the apocalypse, a splendid 
shape, going forth " conquering and to conquer." 
It had not yet, like that great emblem, darkened 
down through its successive shapes of terror ; until it 
moved against the world, " Death on the pale horse," 
followed by the unchained ministers of mischief, and 
smiting with plague, famine, and the sword. 

Eloquence sustained a memorable loss in Curran. 
His mind had the originality of genius. If it be al- 
lowed that instances of extravagance are to be found 
in the ablest efforts of Irish oratory ; still the Irish 
are an eloquent people ; perhaps of modern times the 
most eloquent. England, great in every department of 
mind, has, of necessity, produced great speakers. But 
they have been debaters rather than orators ; their 
power has been largely inspired by the demands of 
their position. They have seldom come into the field 
with an native and irresistible designation for the glo- 
ries of eloquence. Born for other pursuits, but ca- 
pable of all, they have been impelled to the discipline 
by the duty. With almost the sole exception of Chat- 
ham, their fame was less conquered than earned ; it was 
founded upon that master-use and general force of 
thought which grows by vigorous exertion, and the 
habitual converse with great concerns. The labours of 
the chief English statesmen resemble the labours of 
the people. Leaving behind them proud memorials 



216 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

of their prowess, they have all been stamped with 
the evidence of human formation — massive, grand, 
and full of utility, they still differ singularly from 
the vivid eloquence of Ireland : the canal, the aque- 
duct or the artificial hill, scarcely differ more from 
the living cataracts, and towering and stormy pinna- 
cles, of nature. 

Conspicuous for self-command, for senatorial dig- 
nity, and for that unwearied and majestic reasoning, 
which raised him to the highest rank in the first of legis- 
lative assemblies, Pitt, ruling by his eloquence, placed 
its strength in argument, elevation, and choice of lan- 
guage. His rival, Fox, a man of extraordinary intel- 
lect, made his chief impression by irregular, but power- 
ful, bursts of feeling. But the finest efforts of both 
were occasional, and we look in vain in their recorded 
speeches for those passages, over which the memory 
hangs with long delight. All the attributes of " elo- 
quence divine," if they were ever found combined 
among men, belonged to another nation. 

Burke, Sheridan, Grattan, and Curran, were Irish- 
men ; all dissimilar in their styles, but all bearing the cha- 
racteristics of their country; four memorable men, like 
Homer's chieftains, each with his day of undivided tri- 
umph, and each coming into the field with a peculiar 
splendour on his brow. Of those, Grattan was the latest 
survivor, and perhaps in parliament the most power- 
ful. Unattaining and obviously undesirous of attain- 
ing the Asiatic and imperial gorgeousness of the great 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 217 

champion of his native eloquence, Burke ; he had the 
steely armour and polished and pointed weapons of 
the Greek warrior. In the British House of Com- 
mons he obtained boundless praise. Yet Grattan 
was scarcely to be judged of here. In the romance 
of a rich fancy, he dreamed, that he had given a con- 
stitution to Ireland ; and that it was his duty to refuse 
to be comforted over its grave. Like the exiles of 
Jerusalem, he was reluctant to strike the string in 
another land. But, until he died, he was the master 
still. His early politics were local, and his mind had 
been too long wasted on the services of party ; but, 
in the later period of his life, as a member of the 
imperial parliament, he had a larger scope ; and, 
though seldom exhibiting his powers, he proved that 
they were magnificent. In the stormy questions which 
renewed the war, none showed a greater breadth of 
wing ; and, in almost his last speech, one in which 
he urged the declaration of hostilities against Napo- 
leon, he left all rivalry far below ; he " sprang up- 
wards like a pyramid of fire." 

It was the fate of Curran never to have been a 
member of the English legislature. His career in 
the Irish parliament had but occasional claims to 
distinction. Yet this result evidently arose from no 
want of senatorial faculty. In the few instances 
which excited his feelings, he was listened to with 
unqualified delight. But his lot had been cast in 
the courts of law, and his life was there. Parliament 



218 CHARACTER OP CURRAN. 

was but a resting-place to him, after the labours of the 
day; and he seldom spoke, but in the sport of the 
moment, or the humorous disdain of his adversary ; he 
left the heavy arms to the regular ^combatants, and 
amused himself with light and hovering hostility. 
Yet, his shaft was dreaded, and its subtlety was sure 
to find its way, wherever there was a folly to be stung. 
With such gifts, what might not Curran have been, 
early removed from the party confusions, and perilous 
objects which thickened the atmosphere of public life 
in Ireland, into the enlarged prospects and noble and 
healthful aspirations which elated the human spirit in 
this country, then ascending to that imperial height 
from which the world was to lie beneath her. In his 
frequent expressions of a wish to abandon the Irish 
bar ; a wish constantly thwarted by circumstances, 
or perhaps still more by the strong affection which 
he retained for his country ; may be found some solu- 
tion for that occasional spleen of heart with which he 
spoke of England. He must have often mentally 
measured himself with her leading ]men. It was a 
period of singular intellectual distinction, and no man 
was more sensitive to fame. If we could enter into 
the feelings of a caged falcon, while it sees its 
fellows, of no brighter eye, or more rapid . wing, 
sweeping through the fields of air ; we might per- 
haps have some image of a genius chained to a 
province and a profession. The locality made the 
grievance. Curran 's capabilities as an orator were 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 219 

of the highest order, but he always regarded them as 
injured and obscured. His pathos, force, and fancy 
were acknowledged with universal admiration, but 
he felt that their effect was in its nature transitory ; 
that it was the sparkling of a flame on the ground ; 
while Burke, Pitt, and Fox, were moving in their 
courses above the eyes of the world,— great lights, re- 
ceiving the homage of the empire, and placed in that 
historic elevation from which they were never to fall. 
It is as an advocate that Curran's true rank must be 
estimated. And yet his published speeches give an 
inadequate impression of his actual powers. It is 
said, that those speeches can scarcely, in any instance, 
be regarded as having undergone his revision. 
And of all animated speakers, Curran was the most 
difficult to follow by transcription. His language, 
generally exuberant and figurative, in a remark- 
able degree ; was sometimes compressed into a 
pregnant pungency, which gave a sentence in a 
word ; the word lost, the charm was undone. But 
his manner could not be transcribed, and it was 
created for his style. His hand, eye, and form, 
were in perpetual speech. Abrupt as his appeals 
sometimes seem, and broken as may be the links of 
his rich illustrations ; nothing was abrupt to those who 
could see him ; nothing was lost ; except when some 
flash would burst out, of such sudden brilliancy, as to 
leave them dazzled too strongly to follow the flashes 
that shot after it with restless illumination. 



220 CHARACTER OP CURRAN. 

Of his speeches, the greater number have been 
impaired by the difficulty of the time, or the imme- 
diate circumstances of their delivery. Some of the 
most powerful have been totally lost. The period 
itself was fatal to their preservation. 

When Erskine pleaded ; he stood in the midst of a 
secure nation ; and pleaded, like a priest of the temple 
of justice, with his hand on the altar of the consti- 
tution, and all England waiting to treasure every de- 
luding oracle that came from his lips. Curran pleaded 
— not in a time when the public system was only so 
far disturbed as to give additional interest to his elo- 
quence, but in a time when the system was 
threatened with, instant dissolution ; when society 
seemed to be falling in fragments round him ; when 
the soil was already throwing up flames. Re- 
bellion was in arms. He pleaded, not on the floor 
of a shrine, but on a scaffold ; with no companions, 
but the wretched and culpable beings who were to 
be flung from it hour by hour ; and no hearers, but 
the crowd, who rushed in desperate anxiety to that 
spot of hurried execution ; and then rushed away, 
eager to shake off all remembrance of scenes which 
had torn every heart among them. 

It is this which puts his speeches beyond the cold 
jurisdiction of the critic. He had neither time nor 
thought for studying the marble graces of scholar- 
ship. He was a being embarked in strong emer- 
gency ; a man, and not a statue. He had the lives 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 221 

of men in his hand ; and he was to address men, of 
whom he must make himself master, or surrender 
those lives to the executioner before the day was done. 
In our more tranquil time, we can scarcely conceive 
either the necessity or the exertion ; but both are 
deeply impressed where they existed, monumental 
memories in the unhappy mind of Ireland. 

It is to be regretted, for the honour of his consisten- 
cy, that Curran had ever entered the House of Com- 
mons. There he followed the course of faction, and 
was a partizan ; at the bar he followed the course 
of his duties and his feelings, and was a patriot. 
The courage of the bar is a consideration of the first 
importance, in a profession which stands as the natu- 
ral bulwark between the excesses of power, and the 
feebleness of the individual. Curran was eminently 
and uniformly courageous. In defiance of all personal 
hazard, — for in those days suspicion rapidly glanced 
from the client to the advocate, — and against all re- 
monstrance, he threw himself into the boldest posi- 
tions of advocacy. Alternately stripping with a con- 
temptuous hand the errors of government, and 
resisting the dictation of the bench ; invoking the 
parliamentary sense of character, and denouncing the 
agents and prosecutions of the crown ; he was always 
found in the vanguard, always utterly regardless of per- 
sonal consequences, never repelled by the most hope- 
less cause ; and, though conscious that every step 
which he advanced in the service of his unfor- 



222 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

tunate countrymen, was carrying him further from 
all official rank, and that he was forfeiting the ermine 
for men who could bequeath to him nothing but their 
shrouds ; he never refused to give the most forlorn 
applicant to his genius, that chance for life which was 
to be found in his splendid intrepidity. 

In the minor order of trials, Curran was matchless. 
His wild wit and eccentric allusions, his knowledge 
of native habits, and his skill in throwing light on 
the very spot where knavery imagined itself secure 
of concealment, made him first of the first, in the 
presence of an Irish jury. He was never more resist- 
less, than when he seemed to give way to the volatile 
and sportive spirit of the moment ; and never nearer 
the detection of imposture than when he and the 
impostor seemed to laugh together. It was then 
that, suddenly turning on him, he tore off his dis- 
guise, and in language more searching than the 
scourge, tortured the naked perjurer into truth. 

It was by this mixture of apparently discordant 
qualities, that his highest effects were produced. 
In the opening of his cause ; from the wayward man- 
ner in which he loitered over details, and the palpable 
readiness to rest himself, wherever a jest could be 
found ; it would have been impossible for a stranger 
to anticipate the mass of daring conception, the keen 
and stern energy, and above all, the fiery originality, 
condensed under that careless brow- It was in this 
originality that a large share of his triumph con- 



CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 223 

sistetl. The course of other great public speakers 
may in general be predicted from their outset ; but in 
Curran's eloquence prediction was in vain. His mind, 
always full, was always varying the direction of its 
exuberance; — with all the beauty, it had all the 
wildness, of a mountain stream, now bounding from 
rock to rock, now winding its way through the thou- 
sand obliquities of the landscape, but always reflecting 
sunshine ; until it swells into strength, and thunders 
down in the cataract. 

Yet in our zeal for the memory of an orator, whose 
fame is among the rights of his country to renown ; 
we do not disguise the errors of his style. His 
speeches exhibit occasional defects of taste, exam- 
ples of distorted conception, and careless defiances of 
classic elegance. But in the printed speeches of 
what great master of oratory, living or dead, are 
there to be found nobler contrasts to those passing 
imperfections ? We are to remember of Curran, 
that his were not the labours of the study, but the 
sudden and vigorous impulse of public duty ; that 
they were not carved with curious delicacy, not 
gems to be deposited in museums, but masses 
built up for the pillars and buttresses of a great 
popular cause ; rapidly wrought to meet the emer- 
gency ; bold and rough-hewn to stand the weather 
and the tooth of time ; and that if, like the im- 
mortal sculptures of the Parthenon, the touch of the 
artist has given them surpassing beauty ; it is but so 



224 CHARACTER OF CURRAN. 

much added to their primal purpose — that primal 
purpose being strength, solidity, and the perpetual 
support of the temple of our nobler Minerva, 
the constitution. 

The details of Curran's private life are for the 
biographer. But, of that portion which lying be- 
tween public effort and domestic privacy, forms the 
chief ground of social character ; all who knew him 
have spoken with panegyric. Few individuals, 
possessed of such powers of sarcastic wit, could have 
been more unwilling to use them; and few whose 
lives passed in continual public conflict, could have 
had more personal friendships. He was fond of encou- 
raging the rising talent of his profession, and gave 
his advice and his praise liberally, wherever they 
might kindle or direct a generous emulation. He 
loved society, and though by his abilities and his 
fame entitled to associate with the highest ranks of 
birth and office, he evidently preferred the simple 
intercourse of familiar friends. As a festive com- 
panion he was unequalled, " without a similar or 
a second ; " and has left in the memory of his 
associates, more of the happiest strokes of a fancy, 
at once keen, classic, and sparkling, than any other 
wit of his century. 

Finis vitas ejus amicis tristis, extraneis etiam 
ignotisque non sine cura fuit. 

Quicquid ex Agricola amavimus, quicquid mirati 
sumus, manet, mansurum est in animis hominum, in 
seternitate temporum, fama rerum. — Tacit. 



XL 



LUTHER. 

Of all the noble impulses which ever created, ani- 
mated, and rewarded the whole dedication of the 
mind of man, the noblest is, beyond all question, 
that of the great religious reformer. The feelings 
of the conqueror, the statesman, or the legislator, 
proud and comprehensive as they are, entirely 
sink in the comparison. Limited to a nation and an 
age, their nature, like their objects, is essentially tame 
and transitory, to a class of feelings which belong 
to higher worlds, and even whose humblest efforts 
comprehend generations to the last hour of time. 
What can the prizes of earth offer, equal to a sense of 
the divine commission, of the apostleship of light, of 
the summons and the power to work the mighty 
miracle of giving eyes to the spiritually blind, of break- 
ing the chain of the spiritual captive, of challenging 
the great adversary of good in his stronghold, and 
dragging him bound before man and angels; the 
prospect of glories, unborn of mortality; the fire of 
aspirations, which vindicate their own high origin ; 

Q 



226 LUTHER. 

the filling of the heart with a tide of bold promptings 
and magnificent deeds, as palpably the result of in- 
fluence from above, as the swellings of the ocean are 
ruled by the lights of heaven. 

Even without alluding to the infinite superiority of 
all that concerns the imperishable spirit ; the tri- 
umphs of the religious reformer in a human view, 
have a grandeur and an use, which place them in the 
foremost rank of human things. Unshared, like 
military fame, with inferior instruments, and un- 
tinged with blood ; unpurchased, like the successes 
of political life, by those humiliating compliances, which 
form so large a portion of a public career ; and unem- 
barrassed by the clouds and difficulties which beset 
the most perfect work of legislation ; the religious 
reformer not merely acts upon a larger scale, but 
with a more fearless glance at both the past and 
the future. From the nature of things, he ought 
to be the boldest, the most secure, the most ele- 
vated and triumphant in heart, of all mankind ; for, 
his duty done, his responsibility ceases ; he is no 
more answerable for the consequences, than the hus- 
bandman is answerable for the harvest ; when he has 
sown the divine seed, all is thenceforth the work of 
elements above the control of man. His purpose, his 
faculties, and his career, less resemble those of mor- 
tality, than of one of those sons of light, who transmit 
the divine will through creation : passive yet rejoicing, 
obedient yet full of glorious energy ; moving unstained 



LUTHER. 227 

through all the imperfections and impurities of sur- 
rounding things ; whatever may be the trials which 
meet it on its way, triumphant by the innate virtue 
of its mission ; and in patience and in power, adminis- 
tering its high functions, until the glad hour of its 
recal. 

Of all mankind since the days of the apostles, the 
individual who made the deepest impression on the 
character of the human race, was the leader of the 
German reformation. 

The ways of providence are mysterious, but it 
acts by ordinary means. It is clearly a divine law, 
that there shall be no waste of miracle ; for miracle 
disturbs, to a certain degree, that human agency 
which it is the obvious purpose of the divine govern- 
ment to sustain in its vigour. Where the work can 
be effected by man, it is done by man ; where it 
partially transcends human powers, partial aid is 
given ; the unmingled power of heaven is alone 
displayed, where the faculties of its creatures are 
palpably incapable of influencing the great design ; 
where man is the dust of the balance, unfelt in the 
swaying of the mighty scales. 

Where the object was human, the means have al- 
ways been human. When an empire was to be founded, 
a daring soldier was summoned to break down the bar- 
riers of the surrounding realms, and crush resistance 
with the sword. Even where the object was divine, 
the assistance was given, up to the due point, and no 
Q 2 



228 LUTHER. 

further. The apostles required the possession of 
miraculous gifts, to ensure the public belief in their 
mission; they required, above all, the gift of 
tongues, to communicate the revelation to the ends 
of the earth. Those gifts were bestowed. But no 
new miracle gave them the knowledge, which was 
attainable by human means. And St. Paul, elo- 
quent, accustomed to the business of life, trained 
to the habits of Greece and Rome, and versed in the 
learning and philosoph} 7 of the time, was chosen to 
struggle with the courtiers, the populace, and the 
philosophers of Greece and Rome. 

"What St. Paul was to the first century, Luther, 
if with a less conspicuous commission, yet with a 
scarcely less important effect, was to the sixteenth. 

The apostolic age of Rome has yet had no rival in 
external grandeur, internal vividness, or vast and per- 
manent influence on the world. The magnificent 
fabric of the Caesars, the most superb ever raised by 
man, had reached its height. The arts of war and go- 
vernment, the nobler embellishments of genius and 
taste, volumes from which even modern refinement 
still draws its finest delights, works of art that will 
serve as models of excellence and beauty to the latest 
hours of the world, the proudest developements of the 
human mind in eloquence and philosophy, were the 
external illustrations of the first age. 

The moral empire was more magnificent still. The 
dissonant habits, feelings, and prejudices of a host of 



LUTHER* 229 

nations, separated by seas and deserts ; and yet more 
widely separated by long hostility and barbarian pre- 
judices, were controlled into one vast system of sub- 
mission ; peace was planted in the heart of furious 
communities, agriculture reclaimed the wilderness, 
commerce covered the ocean, and peopled its shores. 
Knowledge unforced, and thus the more productive 
and the more secure, was gradually making its way 
through the extremities of the great dominion ; an 
intellectual fire, spreading, not with the hazardous 
and startling fierceness of incendiarism, but with the 
gentle and cheering growth of dawn, over every 
people. 

But the more wondrous characteristic still, was 
Christianity ; the diffusion of a new knowledge, as 
much more exalted, vivid, and essential, than all that 
had ever been wrought by the faculties of man, as 
the throne from which it descended was loftier than 
the cradle and the tomb ; the transmission of new 
powers over nature and mind ; the conquest of im- 
mortality over the grave ; and -the fight against that 
mysterious and terrible strength in which the 
rulers of darkness war against the human soul — 
above all, transcendant in glory, the presence of 
the Immanuel, Him whom it is guilt lightly to name, 
that King of kings, whom " the heaven, and the heaven 
of heavens cannot contain :" God the Son; descend- 
ing on earth to take upon him our nature, and, by a 
love surpassing all imagination, submitting to a death 



230 LUTHER. 

of ignominy, that by his sacrifice we might be for- 
given. 

The splendours of that age must throw all which 
follow, into utter eclipse. Yet the age of Luther and 
the reformation bears such similitude, as the grandest 
crisis of human events and human agency may bear 
to the visible acting of providence. 

The empire of Charles the Fifth, second only to 
the Roman, was just consolidated. A singular pas- 
sion for literature was spreading. Government was 
gradually refining from the fierce turbulence of the 
Gothic nations, and the headlong tyranny of the 
feudal princes. The fine arts were springing into a 
new existence. The power of the sword was on the 
verge of sinking under the power of the mind. Com- 
merce was uniting the ends of the earth by the ties 
of mutual interest, stronger than the old fetters of 
Rome. A new and singular science, diplomacy, was 
rising, to fill up the place of the broken unity of 
Roman dominion, and make remote nations feel 
their importance to mutual security. A new world 
was opened, to supply the exhausted ardour of 
the European mind with the stimulus of discovery, 
and, perhaps, with the not less important purpose of 
supplying, in the precious metals, a new means of 
that commercial spirit which was obviously destined 
to be the regenerator of Europe. Force had been 
the master, and the impulse of the ancient world. 
Mutual interest was now to be the master, and the 



LUTOBH. 231 

impulse of a world appointed to a nobler and more 
salutary career. To crown all, arose that art of arts, 
by which a new lustre has been given to human 
knowledge ; by which the wisdom of every age is 
accumulated for the present, and transmitted to the 
future ; by which a single voice, in whatever obscu- 
rity, may speak to mankind, and make its wrong, 
its wisdom, and its discovery, the feeling, the pos- 
session, and the impulse of all ; — that only less than 
miracle, the art of printing. 

But in this expanse of imperial and intellectual 
brightness, there was one lingering cloud, which 
threatened again to overspread the whole. As paga- 
nism in the Roman empire, had degraded the natural un- 
derstanding of the people, and finally corrupted their 
habits into utter ruin ; superstition had assumed the 
paramount influence in the rising European world ; 
with the same seat, the same ambition, and still 
deeper and more corrupting arts of supremacy. 

To rescue Europe, one of those great instruments 
which providence reserves, to awake or restore the 
hopes of nations, was now summoned. 

Martin Luther was born on the 10th day of No- 
vember, 1483, at Eisleben, a small town in the 
county of Mansfield, and electorate of Saxony. His 
father, John Luther, was employed in the mines ; in 
which he had raised himself, by his intelligence and 
good conduct, to property and respectability, and 
held the office of a local magistrate. 



Z32 LUTHER. 

At Eisleben, Luther was placed under the tuition 
of a man of learning, George iEmilius. At fourteen he 
was sent to a school at Magdeburgh ; from which, 
within a year, he was transferred to a superior 
seminary at Eisenach, under the care of the Francis- 
cans. Here the first evidences of his application and 
ability were given in his school successes, his know- 
ledge of the abstruse grammar of the day, and the 
spirit and ease of his Latin versification.* 

In 1502, this distinguished pupil was transferred 
to the College of Erfurt; where he made himself 
master of the Aristotelian logic, and of the more 
valuable knowledge of the Latin classics, then be- 
coming popular from the authority of Erasmus. 
Greek and Hebrew were still comparatively un- 
known ; the first professorship of Greek in the 
University of Wittenburg was that of Melancthon, 
sixteen years after. 

In 1503, Luther took the degree of Master of Arts ; 
and now, completed in all the science which univer- 
sities could give, he was urged by his family to apply 
himself to the study of the law, as the most direct 
road to fortune. His mind had already pointed to theo- 
logy, but he gave way to opinion, and began a reluc- 
tant study of the Civilians. Accident alone deprived 
the law of a man, whose eloquence and sagacity might 
have conferred new honours on the profession; but 

* Preef. ad Seckend. 



LUTHER. 233 

whose daring vigour and sacred sincerity of heart were 
destined to achievements, before which all human 
honours sink into nothing. 

In 1504, Luther, walking in the fields one day with 
Alexius, a young friend, was overtaken by a thun- 
der storm ; and saw with horror his companion struck 
dead at his side. At this frightful catastrophe, the 
thought of the utter uncertainty of life, and of the 
necessity of devoting it to preparation for the final 
hour, smote him. It was the monastic age ; and piety 
could conceive no higher form of service to God or 
man than seclusion within conventual walls. On the 
spot, he made a solemn vow, to abjure the world and 
take the cowl. 

The determination was communicated to his pa- 
rents, and after some remonstrance against this sacri- 
fice of emolument and distinction, was complied with. 
But his younger relatives were still to be made ac- 
quainted with his retirement from life. This was done 
in a curiously characteristic manner. Luther, like 
most of his countrymen, was attached to music ; and 
he sang and performed with skill. He summoned his 
friends to an evening entertainment ; gave them mu- 
sic, and at the close declared to them his unchange- 
able resolution, thenceforth, to bid farewell for ever 
to the enjoyments of man. 

In 1505, he became a member of the Augus- 
tines at Erfurt ; commencing his career with that 
fulness of determination which formed so striking a 



234 LUTHER. 

feature of his life. He sent back his lay habits to 
his father's house, returned his Master of Arts' ring, 
and declared his intention of changing his Christian 
name to Augustine. He now not merely submitted to 
the severe discipline which was prescribed by the rules, 
however practically evaded by the members of the 
religious orders ; but he courted their extreme rigour, 
and soon became remarkable * for his mortifications, 
his labours, his fasting, and his prayer. He abandoned 
all his previous studies, and took with him only 
Virgil and Plautus ; the latter a singular choice, yet 
which we cannot attribute to a love for its peculiar 
style in the mind of a young ascetic who had so 
sternly renounced the world. 

But the personal drudgeries of the conventual life 
were not less severe, and were even more humbling, 
than its religious restrictions. Among other offices, 
Luther was compelled to stand porter at the gate ; and 
was sent through the town with a bag at his back to 
beg for the convent. This constant succession of 
mean labours, which at once deprived him of time for 
study, and occupied it in pursuits exhausting and de- 
grading, at length became too heavy for even the 
buoyancy of his mind, and he sank into a state of 
despondency, which rapidly influenced his religious 
opinions. To find his way out of this labyrinth, he 
applied to the head of the Augustines in Germany, 

* Melanct. Praef. 



LUTHER. 235 

Staupitz, a man of sense and feeling. Staupitz re- 
commended to the inquirer submission to the course 
of his duty ; but enjoined on the prior of the convent 
the more effectual command, to relieve him from his 
drudgeries, and give leisure for literature to a mind 
which he already pronounced * likely to render dis- 
tinguished services to religion. 

Up to this period the Bible had never been in the 
hands of Luther. Fragments of it were read in the 
church service, but beyond those the wisdom of Reve- 
lation was a dead letter. The Faculty of Theology 
at Paris, had just branded itself to all succeeding 
ages, by the declaration that ' Religion was undone, 
if the study of Greek or Hebrew were permitted.' f 
And the general opinion seems to have been compre- 
hended in the speech attributed to a popular monk — 
' They have invented a new language, which they call 
Greek ; you must be on your guard against it. There 
is in the hands of many a book which they call the 
New Testament ; it is a book full of daggers and 
poison. As to the Hebrew, it is certain that whoever 
learns it, immediately becomes a Jew.' 

The year 1507 was a memorable epoch in the life 
of this great servant of religion. In this year the Bible 
first fell into his hands. He had already taken 
orders 4 when he found a neglected Latin copy of the 
Scriptures lying in the library of the convent. Its 

* Seckendorf, p. 10. f Villers on the Reformation, p. 93. 



236 LUTHER. 

subject instantly laid hold of his mind. The study 
became at once fearful and delightful to him. De- 
prived of all assistance in an inquiry which had been 
hitherto closed on Christendom, he was driven to his 
own resources ; and he suffered no text of the sacred 
volume to escape him without the most eager effort 
to ascertain its meaning. Like all men who thus 
study Scripture; which will not give its holy wisdom 
to the negligent, the hasty, or the proud ; he found 
its difficulties rapidly clearing before him, his know- 
ledge increasing, and his conviction of the profound 
wisdom of inspiration, and the essential truth of 
Christianity, growing more strongly into the sub- 
stance of his mind. This result has been promised 
to all, who will seek for the truth in prayer; — if there 
be one exercise of the human heart and under- 
standing on which the spirit of the Almighty pre- 
eminently descends, it is the conscientious search into 
the wisdom of the Bible. 

But, mingled with those elevating sensations, were 
others that belong to the feebleness of our mortal na- 
ture. Luther's whole previous system of thinking 
on religious subjects required to be swept away, be- 
fore the foundation for his purified knowledge could 
be laid. The strong discordance between his habitual 
conceptions and the unearthly teaching of the inspired 
word disturbed him, and there were periods when he 
sank into such despondency, as to feel himself ready 
to expire. The terrors of the divine justice, exempli- 



LUTHER* 23? 

fied in the punishment of the infidel and the criminal, 
pressed with painful strength on his imagination; 
until he was urged, by this very conflict of mind, to 
search more deeply into the grounds of the divine 
mercy. He has been known to hurry away from a 
dispute on doctrine, and, overpowered by the strug- 
gles of his own heart, to fling himself on his bed in 
an agony of supplication, repeating the soul-searching 
words of the apostle : — " He hath concluded all in 
unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all." 

Those trials are well known in the history of con- 
version ; and if they do not occur with equal conflict 
in all instances of the change from natural darkness to 
divine knowledge, they yet have taken place in many 
of the most powerful intellects, and holiest hearts, of 
the Christian world. 

Still, the first efforts of the awakened heart to relieve 
itself from those throes of conscience, are often marked 
by human fallibility. Luther, like thousands in his 
circumstances, sought relief in the more rigid observ- 
ance of personal mortification. Fasting was the great 
conventual standard of virtue. Luther, when he was 
to celebrate mass, now abstained from food between 
midnight, and noon. He sometimes even fasted for 
three days together. This discipline, joined with 
intense study, threw him into a violent illness. But 
his illness was probably more of the mind than of the 
body, for it was to the mind that the medicine was 
applied. Even in the ignorance and corruption of 



238 LUTHER. 

the conventual life, God had not left himself without 
witness. — An old brother of the Order, who attended 
his sick-bed, discoursed with him on ' the remission 
of sins,' and finally brought him to the great con- 
viction, that e Justification was of grace, by faith.' 

In the Superior of the Augustines, too, Luther 
found at once a protector and a guide ; Staupitz 
commended his application to the Scriptures, and ad- 
vised him to make himself an able ' textualis, et loca- 
lis ;' a master of the leading doctrines, and quick at 
the quotation of Scripture language. 

To those acquirements of nature, nature had added 
the important one of fluency in public speaking ; a 
faculty neglected by the monks, but which he 
cultivated by preaching for his brethren in the 
churches of the surrounding villages. Thus furnished 
with the knowledge, the will, and the active ability ; 
his time at length came to be called into a service, 
before which the glories of the world are a dream. 

In the middle of the fifteenth century, the art of 
printing had been discovered. Even before the close 
of the century, the spirit of this wonder-working disco- 
very had transpired, in an almost universal conviction 
of the value of literature to the prosperity and honour 
of nations. In 1495, the German Electors,, in their 
assembly at Worms, passed a resolution in favour of 
the erection of universities in their several states. 
Frederick, Elector of Saxony, a man whose temper 
and wisdom well entitled him to the name of c the 



U'TiiKk. &39 

Sage,' lost no time in acting on this auspicious reso- 
lution, and he founded the far-famed University of 
Wittemberg. Staupitz was applied to for the recom- 
mendation of a scholar of his order, and he named 
Luther, who was appointed to the professorship of 
logic in 1508, at the age of twenty-five. 

One of those signal circumstances now occurred 
which impress their character on a life. Seven of 
the Augustine convents in Saxony, having quarrelled 
with the Vicar-general of the Order on discipline, 
the question was referred, as usual, to Rome ; and 
it is a striking evidence of the early and general re- 
spect for Luther, that he was chosen as their delegate.* 
Rome opened an overwhelming scene to the eyes 
of the German scholar and divine. In his convent 
he had imagined, that in the central city of the church, 
he should find himself in the supreme seat of Chris- 
tian virtue. He found himself suddenly plunged into a 
centre of Italian perfidy, religious indifference, and 
glaring licentiousness. The spirit of Christianity had 
been long extinguished, in the perpetual intrigues 
of a court struggling to preserve its influence among 
the armed rivalries of France, Germany, and Italy. 
The decencies of religious ceremonial were forgotten 
or perverted, in the insolent levity, or fantastic inno- 
vations, of a clergy degenerated into political minions ; 
and too necessary to the vices of their superiors, to be 
in awe of their discipline. Individual life was a tissue 

* Ulenberg, Vit. Luth. p. 9. 



240 LUTHER. 

of the most desperate excesses of profligacy and 
blood. The restraints which have been since imposed 
on popery by the presence of a pure religion, were 
not then thought of, to tame and rebuke this audacity 
of vice ; and Luther saw Rome in the full riot of the 
grand corruption of Christianity, inflated by a thou- 
sand years of power, fearless of change, and maddened 
by those terrible delusions which Providence suffers to 
thicken round the head and heart of the wilful rejec- 
tors of its wisdom. 

( I would not,' he often said afterwards, ' have 
missed, for a thousand florins, the lesson given to me 
by my journey to Rome.' That lesson was destined 
to work mighty consequences. 

The profligate extension of the doctrine of Indul- 
gences at length called forth the great Reformer. 

From the year 1100, Indulgences had been among 
the sources of papal revenue. To stimulate the Cru- 
saders, Urban II. had granted the remission of all pe- 
nances to those who should embark in the enterprises 
for the recovery of the Holy Land. The next use of 
Indulgences was for the support of the fanatical and 
furious war against the Waldenses. But, to make Rome 
the centre of unity to Christendom, and to collect 
within it the chief personages of Europe, had long 
been the policy of the papal court, with a view to 
both power and revenue. In 1300, Boniface VIII. 
proclaimed the Jubilee, a grand general meeting of 
the subjects of the Romish faith at Rome, for a 



LUTHER. 241 

month — to be renewed every fifty years. To allure 
the multitude, Indulgences were published to the 
European world. The Jubilee was found so produc- 
tive to the papal treasury, that the half century was 
deemed too slow a return, and Urban VI. reduced 
the years to thirty-three ; Paul II. went further still, 
and reduced them to twenty-five. The Jubilee, 
which returned in 1500, under Alexander VI. exhi- 
bited all the rank offence of a vast carousal, adding to 
its original corruption the daring scorn of virtue and 
public feeling that grows from long impunity.* 

The Indulgences, once the simple release of the 
penitent from the censures or penances of the church, 
had soon assumed the more important character of a 
release from the guilt of human crimes, and the pre- 
sumed sentence of Heaven. The merits of the Saints 
had been reinforced by the merits of the Saviour ; and 
the Pope, thus furnished with an unlimited stock of 
applicable innocence, declared himself in a condition 
to make the peace of every culprit, living or dead. 

The election of Leo X. precipitated the crisis. 
Leo, educated in the love of the Arts, a personal vo- 
luptuary, of expensive habits, and of that epicurean 
spirit which looked only to putting off the evil day, 
had drawn deeply on the wealth of the Popedom. 
To raise money became indispensable, and he 
attempted it under the double pretext of the war 

* Seckendorf, page 9. 
R 



£42 LUTHER. 

against the Turks, and the building of St. Peter's. 
Large sums were raised by the sale of Indulgences 
throughout Europe, and the money was instantly ab- 
sorbed by the expenditure of the court of Rome. In 
the time of Zuinglius, we have seen the same process 
adopted among the Swiss cantons. But the sum to 
be extorted from Saxony was appropriated to the 
payment of an early debt of Leo to his sister Mag- 
dalen,* incurred when, in the time of Alexander VI. 
he had fled to Genoa. The payment of this debt 
was probably a matter of peculiar importance, for it 
was through the influence of Magdalen's husband, 
Francheschetto Cibo, an illegitimate son of Innocent 
VIIL, that he had been created a Cardinal at the age 
of fourteen, and thus placed within sight of the papal 
throne. Magdalen appointed, as her receivers, Ar- 
cemboldi, a man remarkable for his extortion, and 
Albert, Archbishop of Mentz and Magdeburg. 
Albert delegated the office to Tetzel, a Dominican 
monk, of singularly reprobate character, but whose 
recklessness in the collection of this unpopular tribute 
probably wiped away his sins, in the eyes of the 
superior plunderers. 

Tetzel was a Dominican, a member of that order 
which had usurped the most extraordinary power 
ever possessed by monks, the masters and agents of 
the inquisition, the haughtiest opponents of all reli- 

* Giticciardini. 






lutiier. 243 

gious reformation, and the most violent persecutors in 
an age of religious tyranny. The new delegate was 
known for his activity, his popular address, and his 
contempt of principle. In his harangues on the efficacy 
of indulgences he gave the most revolting license to his 
tongue, and by alternate terror and temptation, 
wrought strongly upon the popular feelings. Luther, 
at this period, had been preparing lectures for his 
class on the Scriptural grounds of repentance. Indul- 
gences made a natural portion of the subject.* He 
found himself ignorant of their history ; he was thus 
urged to examine their origin ; and the results of his 
inquiry were speedily made known in his utter sur- 
prise and scorn at the whole guilty pretension. 

The course of his professional duty brought his 
discoveries into action. Like the priests of his order 
he regularly took his seat in the confessional. But 
in the year 1517, when Tetzel's indulgences had 
become popular, it was found that the purchasers 
refused to undergo the ordained penances,f on the 
ground that they were already remitted by the indul- 
gence. Luther, in his disgust at this evasion of the 
ancient discipline, refused to give them absolution. 
They applied to Tetzel. The Dominican, zealous 
for the credit of his commodity, and secure in the 
protection of the Romish See, expressed the haugh- 
tiest contempt for the interference of an obscure 

* Luther, 1, 100. f Seckend, p. 17. 

R 2 



244 LUTHER. 

German monk; and followed up his scorn by the 
more formidable threat of throwing Luther, and all 
who adhered to him, into the prisons of the inquisi- 
tion. As one of the commission charged with the 
extirpation of heresy, he could have effected his 
purpose at a word ; and to give evidence of his being 
in earnest, Tetzel ordered a pile for the burning of 
heretics to be raised ; an expressive emblem of the 
peril of remonstrating with the delegate of the pope- 
dom. 

It is one of the idle rumours of later years, that 
Luther's opposition arose from discontent at seeing 
the sale of indulgences taken out of the hands of the 
Augustines. But it is not clear, that those monks 
had ever been employed in the sale in Germany. 
The charge was not dreamt of in the Reformer's life- 
time — it has been openly abandoned by the more 
distinguished of the Romish historians — and, in ad- 
dition, Luther was at this period a monk, a public 
adherent of the popedom, and a personal admirer of 
Leo, whose vices, at the distance of Germany, were 
veiled in the splendours of his love of literature, his 
munificence, and his rank as the head of Christendom. 

The true cause of his hostility — the noble and 
generous hostility of truth and virtue, to the most 
corrupting means of the most corrupting delusion 
that ever broke down the morals or the liberty of 
man — was its palpable contradiction to Scripture. 
Luther instantly applied himself to the proof. The 



LUTHEE. 245 

forms of his scholastic education still clung to him, 
and he threw the question into the shape of a contro- 
versy in the schools. He now published his celebrated 
" Ninety-five propositions," embracing the whole doc- 
trine of penance, purgatory, and indulgences ; sus- 
pended them on the church door in one of the 
thoroughfares of Wittemberg, and challenged a pub- 
lic disputation. The preamble of this paper was as 
follows : 

' Amore et studio elucidandae veritatis, haec sub- 
scripta Themata disputabuntur Wittembergiae, prae- 
sidente R. P. Martino Luthero, Eremitano Augus- 
tiniano, Artium et S. Theologiae Magistro, ejusdem 
ibidem ordinario Lectore. 

' Quare petit, ut qui non possunt verbis praesentes 
nobiscum disputare, agant id Uteris, absentes. 
1 In nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Amen.' # 
The challenge was not accepted, and he printed 
his * Propositions.' This was virtually the first sound 
of the Reformation. The public mind was now, for 
the first time, turned to the great controversy. Lu- 
ther's letter, sent at the same period to Albert, Arch- 
bishop of Mentz, briefly contains the principles of 
his doctrine. 

' I do not complain,' said he, ' so much of the 
manner in which the Indulgences are published, 
(which I have not witnessed,) as of the injuries which 

* Luth.. i. 51. 



246 LUTHER. 

they must do to the multitude ; who believe, that if 
they purchase those pardons, they are secure of their 
salvation, and safe from future punishment. The 
souls intrusted to your care, are thus stimulated to 
what will lead them to ruin, and how hard must be 
the account which you will have to render to God for 
all those ! From this cause I could be silent no 
longer ; for no one can be certain of his salvation by 
any gift conferred on him by a bishop. It is by the 
grace of God alone that salvation can be obtained ! 

( Works of piety and charity are infinitely better 
than Indulgences, and yet they are not preached to 
the people with so great pomp or zeal, nay, they are 
supplanted by Indulgences. 

' The first and only duty of bishops, is to instruct 
the people in the gospel and the love of Christ. Jesus 
never commanded Indulgences to be published. What 
horror, therefore, must that bishop experience, and 
how great his danger, if he allow the sale of Indul- 
gences to be substituted among his flock for the doc- 
trines of revelation. Shall not Christ say to such 
persons, ye strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ? 
What can I do, most excellent prelate and illustrious 
prince, but entreat you, by the Lord Jesus Christ, 
to direct your attention to this subject, to destroy the 
book which you have sanctioned by your arms,* and 
impose on the preachers of Indulgences a very different 

* Albert's insignia were on the title-page. 



LIT1IEU. 247 

way of recommending them, lest some one should 
arise and confute both them and that book, to the 
great reproach of your Highness. The consequences 
of this J. dread extremely, and I fear it must happen, 
unless a speedy remedy be applied.' 

This letter shewed equally that he had yet to learn 
the insincere character of the Archbishop of Mag- 
deburg, and to strengthen his own views into confi- 
dence and system. But the time for both was at hand. 

The Propositions produced so powerful an effect 
on the public mind in Germany, that Tetzel found 
himself compelled to stoop to the controversy. He 
published two theses, comprehending the extraordinary 
number of one hundred and fifty-six propositions ; 
and in an assembly of three hundred monks com- 
bated the obnoxious tenets. But, by taking the 
Pope's infallibility as the groundwork of his proof, 
he left the question as open as before ; his ground- 
work was denied, and the disputation closed in his 
burning Luther's book, and in seeing the students 
of Wittemberg burn his in retaliation. 

But the authority of the Pope was still resistless. 
Ages of dominion ; the unhesitating homage of the 
immense priesthood who lorded it over the public 
mind of Europe ; and the popular ignorance, which 
saw in the Pontiff the fountain of faith, of temporal 
authority, and of supernatural power, had accumu- 
lated a weight of sovereignty on the popedom, that 
had never before been possessed by man. Among 



248 LUTHER. 

the most striking proofs of this prescriptive power, 
is Luther's own prostration before the Roman throne ; 
while he assailed, with the most heroic vigour, 
the offences of its subordinates. Of Leo, whose 
personal character was hitherto undeveloped in the 
north, and in whom he saw only the monarch of the 
Church, Luther long spoke with submissive venera- 
tion. 

' But what can this most excellent person do alone 
in so great a confusion ? ' is the language of some of 
his letters on the church disturbances. ■ One 
who is worthy to have been Pontiff in better times, 
or in whose pontificate the times ought to have be- 
come better. In our age, we deserve only such 
Popes as Julius the Second or Alexander the Sixth, 
or some atrocious monsters similar to what the poets 
have created; for even in Rome herself, nay, in 
Rome more than anywhere else, good popes are held 
in ridicule.' 

Of his theses against the corruptions of the Church, 
he had the same fears. He was eminently anxious, 
that they should not be construed into any approach 
towards shaking off his allegiance to his spiritual 
sovereign. Startled at his own celebrity, he made 
it the subject of frequent and sincere apologies to his 
ecclesiastical superiors. In his letter, written in 1518, 
to Jerome Scultetus, the Bishop of Brandenburg, 
he thus humbly explains the necessity which urged 
him to publication. 



LUTHER. 249 

■ On the appearance of the new doctrine of Indul- 
gences, not only my intimate friends, but many who 
were unknown to me, requested by letters, and ver- 
bally, my opinion. For some time I avoided any 
open declaration, but at last the dispute became so 
violent, that I was induced to go so far as even to 
incur the danger of offending the Pope ! 

' But what could I do ? It was not in my own 
power to determine anything upon the subject, and 
I was afraid to contradict those whom I wished to 
respect. They, however, argued so plausibly, in 
attempting to prove what is false and vain ; that they 
arrested my attention, and fairly involved me in the 
controversy. That I might please both parties, I 
judged it most expedient neither to assent to, nor dis- 
sent from either, but, in the mean time, to reason 
upon the subject, until the Church should determine 
what our opinions ought to be ! I therefore pub- 
lished a disputation, and invited all persons publicly 
to declare their sentiments. As I knew several very 
learned men, I requested them in private to open 
their minds to me. I perceived that neither the doc- 
tors of the church, nor the canonists, generally sup- 
ported my opinions. There were only a few canonists 
and scholastic doctors who seemed to approve, and 
even those were not very hearty in their concurrence. 

1 I gave a general challenge upon the subject of 
indulgences, but no one appeared. I then perceived 
that my published disputations were dispersed more 



250 LUTHER. 

widely than I had wished, and were everywhere re- 
ceived, not as matters of discussion, but of positive 
affirmation. I was therefore compelled, contrary 
to my hope and wish, to publish the arguments 
for my Propositions, and thus expose my ignorance. 
I thought it better to incur the shame of being- 
deficient in knowledge, than to allow those to 
remain in error, who took it for granted that my 
Propositions were asserted as undoubted truths. Of 
the accuracy of some of them I myself was doubtful 
— of several I am still ignorant. Some persons deny 
them — I assert none pertinaciously. I submit them 
all to the Holy Church and the Pope.' 

Yet even in these humble acknowledgments, 
the firmness of Luther's love of the truth, let it 
lead him where it would, is expressed with resistless 
simplicity. 

' It is most just that I should lay at your feet what 
I have been employed in. I not only give you leave 
to blot out whatever you think fit, but I shall not be 
concerned, if you should burn the whole. Not that 
I stand in dread of the bulls and threats of those who, 
not knowing what it is to doubt, wish to circulate 
whatever they dream, as gospel. Their audacity, 
joined to their ignorance, induced me not to give way 
to my own fears. Had not the cause been one of so 
great importance, no one should have known me 
beyond my own corner. If the work be not of God, 
I do not pretend that it should be mine. Let it com^ 



LUTIIKR. 251 

to nothing, and be claimed by no one. I ought to 
seek nothing else, than that I should not be the oc- 
casion of error to any one.' 

But the hazard of raising papal wrath, and the 
tremendous consequences of that wrath, were too 
well known by German examples, not to have been 
contemplated by Luther. In an epistle to Staupitz, 
as the head of his order, enclosing the printed de- 
fence of the Propositions for the Pope's perusal, he 
speaks in the spirit of one prepared for the last sacri- 
fices. 

t I request that you will send these trifles of mine 
to that most excellent pontiff, Leo the Tenth, that 
they may serve to plead my cause at Rome. Not 
that I wish you to be joined with me in the danger ; 
for it is my desire that those things may be done at 
my own hazard. I expect that Christ, as judge, 
will pronounce what is right by the mouth of the 
Pope. To those of my friends who would alarm mc 
for the consequences, I have nothing else to say, 
than what Reuchlin said, ' He who is poor has no- 
thing to fear ; he can lose nothing.' I possess no 
property, neither do I desire any. There remains 
to me only a frail body, harassed by continual illness, 
and if they take away my life by open violence or 
stratagem, they make me but little poorer. lam 
satisfied with the possession of my Redeemer and 
Propitiator, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom I shall 
praise as long as I exist. If any one be unwilhng 



252 LUTHER. 

to join with me in these praises, what is that to me ? 
Let him raise his voice after his own fashion. The 
Lord Jesus will save me for ever.' 

But he was soon forced again into the field. He 
was told that the brethren of his order dissented from 
some principles of his doctrine ; and he determined 
to bring the matter to a decision. Having previously 
published twenty-eight Propositions in Divinity, with 
twelve Corollaries, against the Greek philosophy, 
which it was the extraordinary habit of the time to 
introduce into theological discussions ; he set out on 
foot for Heidelberg, the place of the annual assembly 
of the Augustinians. The result of the controversy 
was triumphant. ' All the Wittemberg doctors/ 
says his letter to one of his former teachers, ' nay, 
the whole university, with the exception of one 
licentiate, Sebastian, are now of my way of think- 
ing ; and many ecclesiastics and respectable citizens 
now unanimously say, that they had never heard nor 
known Christ and the gospel before.' 

But the most important share of the triumph was 
the public adhesion of Martin Bucer, already famous 
as a scholar, to the new doctrines. Bucer took 
notes, applied for explanations to Luther, and pub- 
lished an account of the controversy, respectful to 
the opponent monks, but highly commendatory of 
his teacher. 

On his return from Rome, in 1500, Luther had 
taken the degree of Doctor in Divinity. As Doctor, 



LUTHER. 253 

he had obtained the right of teaching publicly as well 
as privately ; and Frederick, the Elector, attended 
some of his sermons, with whose force and simplicity 
he was so much struck, that, on the preacher's de- 
siring to devote himself solely to the study of divinity, 
the Elector permitted him to vacate the chair of logic 
for that of theology. The additional strength thus 
given to his studies, and the additional influence to 
his authority, were among the palpable sources of 
the Reformation. 

But the true struggle for religious and civil free- 
dom was at hand : the conflict, from which Protes- 
tantism, like a new creation, was to be summoned 
by a spirit not less than that of the Supreme. The 
papal exactions had exhausted the Romish vassals, 
as the papal tyranny had disgusted their princes. A 
feeling of scorn for the notorious ignorance of the 
Romish ecclesiastics was rising in this age of restored 
literature, to reinforce the civil discontent. The 
proverbial duplicity of the Romish court, which had 
made its friends doubtful — the wasteful luxury, which, 
scandalizing the devout, drained the poor ; and the 
restless ambition of a power, great only by the per- 
petual quarrels of Europe, all combined to break up 
the whole long train of evil influence by which kings 
and people had been bowed at the Roman footstool. 

To the mere historian nothing is more intricate 
than those sudden changes of human feeling. To 
the man who seeks for wisdom by the light of Provi- 



254 LUTHER. 

dence, the cause is not seldom to be found in the divine 
will to protect the progress of religion. In the furious 
contests of the German princes, the alternate aliena- 
tions and submissions of the empire, and the eager 
intrigues which engrossed the court of Leo, the 
young Reformation found its best shelter, — the storm 
raged among the ancients of the forest, while the 
lowly produce at their feet, more precious in the eye 
of heaven than them all, was suffered to flourish, and 
fill itself with healing virtue. In the shock of Italian 
subtlety, kingly violence, and popular indignation, 
the power of the priesthood was gradually unnerved. 
Loftier interests than those of angry monks absorbed 
the soldiers and statesmen of the time ; and Luther, 
who a few years before, would have perished in the 
flames of the Inquisition, passed unharmed, though 
not unmolested, through life, and went down full of 
years and honours to his grave. 

A great political movement now urged the advance 
of the Reformation. Selim the First, the son of Ba- 
jazet, had reposed from the conquest of the Asiatic 
provinces, only to prepare an irresistible armament 
for the seizure of the European.* A. powerful fleet 
was to be directed against Rhodes, the bulwark of 
Christendom in the Mediterranean; and an army, 
composed of the invincible janizaries, was to march 
on Hungary. The Italian States and the Imperial 

* Guicciardini, 1. 13. 



LUTHER. 255 

were thus menaced at once ; and Leo was too intent on 
the increase of the papal influence, to suffer the peril to 
lose any of its alarms through the weakness of his ap- 
peals to the popular imagination. Prayers were ordered 
to be put up for the safety of the civilized world; a 
solemn exhortation was issued to all Christian princes 
to concentrate their force against the terrible enemy 
of all ; and with the ostensible object of forming a 
German league against the invader, Cardinal Thomas 
de Vio di Gaete, better known as Cajetan, was des- 
patched to the Diet of Augsburg. The extinction of 
Luther and his doctrine was unquestionably among 
the chief purposes of his mission. 

Cajetan's first proceeding was to conciliate Max- 
imilian, who had openly declared his resentment 
against Leo, and his disgust at the whole system of the 
papal policy. ' Had not Leo deceived me,' the em- 
peror was heard to exclaim, ' he would have been 
the only pope whom I could have called an honest 
man.' * Cajetan proposed in the diet, as papal le- 
gate, that a portion of the church revenues should be 
placed at the Emperor's disposal for the Turkish war. 
The result of this palatable concession immediately 
appeared in an imperial letter, dated Augsburg, 
August the 5th, declaring Luther's opinions ' here- 
tical and damnable ; acknowledging the Pope's right 
to judge of doctrine ; entreating Leo to extinguish 

* Lechen, p. 4.'S, 



256 LUTHER. 

the new heresy, and pledging the imperial power to 
observe the decision of Rome, and to compel its ob- 
servance throughout the empire.' But the progress 
of this negociation had already encouraged Leo to the 
habitual violence of the papacy ; and on the 7th of 
August, two days after the despatch of the impe- 
rial letter, Luther was startled by a summons to 
appear within sixty days at Rome. The fate of 
those who had once fallen into the papal grasp was a 
terrible omen. The dungeon for life, or the scaffold, 
was before him ; and, as if to give double assurance 
of his ruin, he found appointed as his judges, Prierio } 
and Ghinucci, bishop of Ascola, both public arraigners 
of his doctrine. 

In our age and country we fortunately can have no 
conception of the justifiable terror that must once have 
seized any man menaced by Rome. He had from 
that moment no country ; to shelter him was to be 
accursed ; to protect him was to draw down the po- 
pular hatred, the public sword, and the indefatigable 
revenge of an universal power. Luther's friends, and 
every friend of religion and freedom throughout 
Europe, trembled for the approaching sacrifice of this 
great antagonist of mental slavery. 

But his cause was in loftier hands than those of 
man. Maximilian's anxiety to secure the throne, at 
his death, to Charles, made the Elector of Saxony's 
friendship of the highest importance to him. Luther, 
as a subject of Saxony, had petitioned Frederic that 



LUTHER. ~ ; 57 

the commission for his trial should sit in Germany. 
This was obtained ; and furnished by his sovereign 
with letters to the senate and principal people of 
Augsburg, and supplied, for his immediate wants, 
from the Electoral purse, he arrived at Augsburg ; 
in his own phrase, " pedester et pauper."* 

His letter to Melancthon exhibits the manliness 
and composure which religion had restored to his mind. 

' There is nothing new going on here, unless that 
this city is full of the rumour of my name, and that 
every one is desirous of seeing Erostratus f the in- 
cendiary. Continue to behave manfully, and to lead 
the youth in the right path. I am willing to be 
sacrificed for them and you, if it be God's will. I 
choose rather to die, than recant what I have said, 
and become the occasion of casting disrepute on the 
most commendable studies. Italy is plunged in 
Egyptian darkness ; all are ignorant of Christ, and 
of the things that are Christ's, yet those are the men 
who are to remain masters of our faith and morals.' 

Still such was the unresisted authority of the papal 
power, that Luther again shrank from the collision, 
and shrank even after he had repelled Cajetan in 
three several conferences, defying him to produce 
scripture for his doctrine. Those conferences, which 
were private, closed in a threat of Cajetan to send 
his stubborn antagonist to Rome, and in Luther's 

* Luth. praef. f The Ephesian who set fire to the Temple of Diana. 

S 



258 LUTHER. 

writing a deprecatory letter, admitting that it was 
his duty to have spoken with more reverence of the 
Pope ; promising to let the doctrine of Indulgences 
rest, if he should not be forced to the discussion, by the 
Romish controversialists ; and desiring that the whole 
controversy might be referred to Leo, for the settle- 
ment of his general conduct and doctrine. Luther's 
language, on this occasion, should be a lesson to those 
who expose themselves to persecution. In all the 
great conflicts of the faith, the most forward have 
been generally the first to give way ; while the meek, 
the humble, and the self-distrusting, have been the 
firmest in extremity. Human presumption is often 
flung into shame by the approach of the real trial. 
The mighty providence that loves the meek and quiet 
spirit, will not give the praise of martyrdom to hu- 
man vanity. The true strength for the final struggle 
is in the abjuration of our own, and the humble hope 
in the strength to be administered alone by the 
eternal source of fortitude and virtue. The agony 
in Grethsemane may have been partially revealed for 
this lesson ; the bloody sweat but an example of the 
terror that may besiege the mind in the prospect of a 
death of torture ; and the command f to pray that 
we may not be brought into trial,' but a result of the 
divine knowledge, that though the spirit may be 
willing to bear, the human nature is made to shrink ; 
for the " flesh is weak," and not to be trusted in the 
presence of desperate pain. 



LTTTHER. 259 

But Luther's letter was an useless degradation. 
Whether from the conviction that he had offended 
the popedom beyond forgiveness, or from what seems 
the actual knowledge of intended violence ; * within 
three days he mounted a horse provided by his friend 
Staupitz, and before evening, was forty miles from 
Augsburg. Staupitz, Lincius, and the prior of the 
Carmelites, with whom Luther had lodged, wisely 
fled a few days after. 

His first work, on his return, was the publication 
of his famous letter to the Elector, detailing the con- 
ferences with Cajetan, and refuting the Dominican's 
arguments. He had now fully ascertained that it 
had been his adversary's intention to send him to 
Rome ; and the pathetic close of his letter deeply 
shews his resignation, and the sense of his danger. 

' I am almost prepared to submit to the pains of 
exile, for I perceive that my enemies have laid snares 
for me on all sides ; nor do I know where I can live 
in safety. What can I, a poor and humble monk, 
expect ? or rather, what danger ought I not to dread, 
since so illustrious a prince is exposed to threats, un- 
less he send me to Rome, or banish me from his ter- 
ritories? Wherefore, lest any injury should befal 
your highness on my account, I am willing to forsake 
my native country, and to go wherever a merciful 
God shall be pleased to direct, leaving the issue to 
his will. 

* Act. Aug. Ap. Luth. Ap. 
s 2 



260 LUTHER. 

( Therefore, most illustrious prince, I respectfully 
bid you farewell, and take my leave, with infinite 
thanks for all the favours that you have been pleased 
to confer upon me. In whatever part of the world 
I may be, I shall never be unmindful of your high- 
ness, but shall pray sincerely and gratefully for your 
happiness, and that of your family.' 

Frederic's cautious habits had concealed from Lu- 
ther the strong interest which he took in the safety 
of this great ornament of his states. But the reso- 
lution to protect him had been already adopted ; and 
the Elector's answer to an insolent rescript of the 
Legate, demanding that Luther should be banished 
from Saxony, and sent to Rome, and declaring that 
' his pestilent heresy should not be suffered to exist,' 
suddenly displayed the determination of a prince, re- 
markable for his politic reluctance to all unnecessary 
avowal of his opinions. 

' Luther's appearance at Augsburg I consider as a 
fulfilment of all that has been promised on my part. 
Notwithstanding the assurances that you gave me of 
allowing him to depart with tokens of your regard ; 
a recantation, I hear, was required of him before the 
subject was sufficiently discussed. 

f Many learned men can see nothing impious, un- 
christian, or heretical in Luther's doctrine ; and its 
chief opponents appear to be among those who do 
not understand it, or whose private interest stimu- 
lates them to opposition. 



LUTHER. 261 

1 1 am always ready to do my duty as a Christian 
prince ; and am therefore at a loss to conceive, why 
there should be held out any such threats ; as that 
the Court of Rome should follow up the cause ; that 
Luther should be sent thither, or that he should be 
banished from my principality. 

' He has, hitherto, been convicted of no heresy, 
and his banishment would be very injurious to the 
University of Wittemberg. I enclose an answer 
to the other parts of your letter, from Luther ; whom 
I do not consider in the light of a heretic, because 
he has not been proved such, and because it is con- 
sistent with justice that he should have a hearing.'* 

This letter was decisive ; Cajetan could no longer 
hope for the sacrifice of the great Reformer. He re- 
turned to Rome, and found the fate of disappointed ne- 
gotiators ; he was charged with precipitancy, where no 
prudence could have insured success. The mortifi- 
cation sank deep into the proud spirit of the Domi- 
nican ; he gradually withdrew from public life, and 
gave himself up to the nobler occupation of rivalling 
the Reformers, in those attainments which had so 
often put the ignorance of the Papal clergy to shame. 
During the eleven years of his remaining life, he 
distinguished himself by the study of the original 
languages of Scripture, and still holds a rank among 
the most learned of his order. 

Miltitz, a Saxon and a layman, was next sent to 

* Luth. i. p. 221.— Meid. L. i.— Secken. p. 53. 



262 LUTHER. 

soften, what the sternness of the Romish prelate had 
failed to break down. He invited Luther to a 
friendly conversation at his friend Spalatin's house at 
Altenburg, in January, 1512. The conference was 
better followed by a supper, in which Luther's joy- 
ous and open nature indulged itself in the conversa- 
tion of his intelligent countryman, without overlook- 
ing the true object of every mission from Rome. 
His letter to his superior Staupitz gives a brief yet 
characteristic account of the scene. ' Atque vesperi, 
me accepto convivio, lsetati sumus, et osculo mihi 
dato, discessimus. — Ego sic me gessi, quasi has Ita~ 
Utates et simulationes non intelligerem."* But the 
papal power was still the great overshadowing influ- 
ence of every mind of Europe, and no courage of 
intellect was adequate to the idea of finally resisting 
the authority, or doubting the sanctity, of the 
* mighty mistress of the faith.' Luther still most 
anxiously and sincerely drew the line between the 
guilty agents, and the ' immaculate source of Romish 
power/ In his letter of the 3d of March 1519 to 
the Pope, he declares himself overwhelmed with re- 
gret at the charge of disrespect to the See. 

' It is those, most holy Father, whom I have re- 
sisted, who have brought disrepute on the church. 
Under the shelter of your name, and by the coarsest 
pretexts, they have gratified a detestable avarice, 

* Scckend, p. 63, 



LUTHEB. 2G3 

and put on the most revolting hypocrisy. Now they 
proceed to throw on me the blame of the mischief 
that has happened; but I protest before God and 
man, that I never did, nor at present do wish to 
make any infringement on the power of the church 
or your holiness ; confessing, in the fullest manner, 
that nothing in heaven or earth is to be preferred to 
it, except the power of Christ Jesus, who is Lord 
of all.' 

Nothing can be more idle, than those subsequent 
charges of hypocrisy which were heaped upon the 
writer of this letter. Luther's whole spirit was sinceri- 
ty ; an extravagant homage to Rome, the first lesson 
and the last in the lives of her subjects throughout 
the earth ; with the secular priest the subject of all 
teaching, and with the regular the very form on 
which his doctrine, his order, and his existence, lived; 
still chained the loftiest and the freest minds. The 
superstition which enabled Rome to work its evils so 
long undetected, hung over the genius, sagacity, 
and independence of mankind with an oppressive 
and bewildering depth, from which Europe was to 
be relieved by no energy born of human nature. A 
more resistless influence, descending from the throne 
of Eternal Wisdom and Mercy, was alone to work 
the miracle. 

But the characters of the successive great leaders 
of the Reformation finely displayed that suitableness 
of means, which perhaps forms one of the most ad- 



264 LUTHER. 

mirable and unquestionable proofs of the acting of 
Providence in the higher changes of nations. 

The mind of Luther was matchlessly adapted for 
the peculiar work that fell to his share. Magnani- 
mous, bold, and contemptuous of all consequences to 
himself, he lived and breathed only for the cause of 
truth ; the impression of the moment absorbed his 
whole ardent imagination ; and whether the heredi- 
tary grandeur of the Popedom towered before his 
eye, or he looked into that deep and ancient gulf of 
tyranny and crime, from which its false supremacy 
rose ; he was ready to proclaim to the world with 
equal sincerity the reverence which over-shadowed 
his spirit, and the stern reprobation which made him 
shrink from the * Mystery of Iniquity.' 

No client of the Popedom has ever expressed 
more willing or more eloquent submission; but no 
convert from darkness to light, no slave of supersti- 
tion awakened to Christianity, no blind Bartimeus 
summoned from sitting by the road-side, and living 
on the alms of knowledge, to the sudden glory of 
intellectual day, and the still sublimer vision of the 
God of Redemption; ever went forth with bolder 
and more resistless strength and scorn against the 
crowned and superb Pharisees and Sadducees of the 
Popedom. The men who followed in the history of 
this noblest of all Revolutions were chiefly of more 

restrained and circumspect minds ; * if some of them 
* Seckend, p. 63. 



LUTHER. 265 

were Luther's superiors in the scholarship of the 
age, their attainments were exercised with less of 
that headlong and unsparing vigour which so often 
turns a controversialist into a personal enemy. 
With the innocence and holiness of the primitive 
times of Christianity, they mingled those more soft- 
ened manners which were required by their contem- 
poraries. Occasional instances of rashness are to be 
found among the most accomplished oL^hose extra- 
ordinary men, but the uncalculating career of Lu- 
ther's mind had no successor. Every failure, not 
less than every exploit, in his progress, is to be attri- 
buted to his eminent possession of the one grand quali- 
ty, the sincerest heart of mankind. It urged him to 
extremes; where others knelt, he prostrated himself; 
where others withheld obedience, he started up into the 
loftiest attitude of hostility. Such an arm was made 
to strike the sword through the helmet of Popery, 
when the armed giant stood in his ancient power, 
defying the strength and hopes of nations. Other 
means were required, when the armour was thrown 
aside for the still more perilous coverture of subtlety 
and hypocrisy ; when the hoary poisoner of kingly 
minds, and the gloomy stirrer-up of popular passions, 
was to be uncloaked and uncowled, and cast out 
naked before the world. 

But, if Luther's sincerity often plunged him into 
difficulties which prudence would have easily a voided; 
we must not degrade so noble and so rare a quality, 



266 LUTHER. 

by forgetting that it led him rapidly to the highest 
of all truths, the knowledge of the Gospel. In all the 
stubbornness of his prejudices, the natural result of the 
temperament, we find a substantial knowledge of the 
spirit of Christianity, that never was administered by 
the unassisted human understanding. It is an insult 
to religious honesty, to doubt that such will always 
be its reward. The atheist, the deist, the general 
wretched race of the scorners, are false to themselves, 
when they tell us that they have been sincere in 
their search for the truth. They never desired to 
find it. Their only desire was to find some flaw, 
some excuse for a metaphysic sneer, some pert op- 
portunity for shewing that they were more sagacious, 
satirical, and foreseeing, than the believers in the 
wisdom of Heaven. They turned over the pages of 
the Bible not to learn, but to insult ; to controvert 
the historian, and put the prophet to shame. They 
never approached it on their knees, with their heads 
bowed, as before the oracles of the supreme Lord of 
Wisdom, with the supplication on their lips, that the 
weakness of their human intellect might be strength- 
ened by the strength of the Divine ; that their 
natural blindness might be washed away in the foun- 
tain of that uncreated light which wells forth by the 
throne of the Eternal ; that all the unworthy passion of 
human applause might be purified ; and that, at 
whatever sacrifice, they might be led into that 
sacred and elevating knowledge which is better than 



LUTHER. 2(>7 

life itself ; loftier, immeasurably loftier, than its 
haughtiest learning ; and happier, unspeakably 
happier, than all the enjoyments that earth can 
give. 

If the infidels of the last age had thus sought the 
truth, they would have found it ; and the world would 
have been spared the guilt and folly of the Voltaires 
and Humes. If the champions and converts of 
Popery at this moment would do this, Popery would 
perish away, like stubble in the flame. If they will 
not, their delusion will only gather thicker round 
them, until it engenders a Revolution, to which all the 
fury and all the havoc of the past were but the toss- 
ings and spectres of a dream. 

Luther's career had hitherto been comparatively 
obscure. His struggles were against the arts and 
violence of men seldom above his own rank, and whose 
defeat could scarcely contribute to the honours of 
the scholar and the theologian. But the discipline 
was useful ; it compelled him to cultivate the powers 
which were yet to grapple with kings and councils ; 
it gave him that confidence in his own resources, 
which the most powerful minds acquire only by use ; 
and it trained him to that knowledge of human 
nature, even under its aspects of craft and treachery, 
which was essential to control the hasty confidence 
and rash intrepidity, of one of the noblest but most 
uncalculating hearts that ever beat in man. 

One controversy he had still to sustain ; curious 



268 LUTHER. 

from its resemblance to those which have signalised 
the revival of conversion in our day ; while it char- 
acterises the scholastic manners of its own. 

Germany, since the age when she ceased to pour 
out her armed hordes on the civilised world, has 
teemed with a less warlike but scarcely less conten- 
tious population, the hordes of scholarship. There 
disputation erects her native throne, and the candi- 
dateship for that uneasy and cheerless seat, is unceas- 
ing and immeasurable. But no theme of literary 
contest could have ever equalled the Reformation, in 
its power over the whole heart of man. Superb no- 
velty, the stirring wrath of the old opinions startled 
by this new assailant, the fear of change, the hope 
of political aggrandisement, the proud hostility of 
Rome, doubly enraged by the shock of its temporal 
crown, aud of its spiritual supremacy ; the more 
solemn feelings kindled by the magnitude, and 
majesty of the Scriptures, revealed after the conceal- 
ment of ages ; were the impulses of the theme ; im- 
pulses which comprehended every class of human sus- 
ceptibility, and filled every class which they com- 
prehended. 

Among the learned men whom this great controversy 
stimulated, was Bodenstein ; better known by the 
name of Carolostadius, which, according to the cus- 
tom of the German literari, he had adopted from his 
birth-place, Carolostad, in Franconia. He had 
already attained considerable literary rank, and was 



LUTHER. 269 

Archdeacon of the church of All Saints at Wittem- 
berg, before his conversion by Luther.* 

His zeal plunged into the centre of the battle ; 
and, resolved to throw away none of his strength, he 
struck his first blow at an antagonist of the highest 
academic renown, Eckius, who, though but thirty 
years old, had carried off the honours of no less than 
eight universities. Pamphlets were written, and 
retorted with equal asperity ; but this remote warfare 
producing no result, it was determined on both sides 
to bring the question to a public argument at 
Leipsic. Higher authorities soon involved them- 
selves in a contest, on whose fate the partisans of the 
champions, with the usual exaggeration of party, 
seem to have conceived that the Reformation itself 
was to depend. 

The Bishop of Mersburg, hearing that Luther had 
been summoned, and dreading the results of any 
struggle with this formidable reasoner, fixed an 
interdict of the disputation on the door of the church 
in which it was to be held. But Duke George, less 
provident, and more sanguine, conceiving that the 
Popish champion must be the victor, ordered the 
interdict to be torn down. Still, the reasoning which 
was to be suffered in a disputation, was not to be 
suffered in a sermon ; and Luther was prohibited from 
preaching in any church in Leipsic. But he had 

Seckend. p. 72. 



270 LUTHER. 

come to preach ; and there were few obstacles which 
could finally resist the determined purpose of such a 
man. He obtained leave, through the Prince of 
Pomerania, to preach before a limited audience in 
the castle. He availed himself of it with stern effect ; 
and his sermon on this occasion is one of memorable 
name, as an elucidation of his doctrines, and still 
more memorable as the cause of his first decisive 
breach with the papacy. 

The form of this famous disputation displayed the 
ancient pomp of the schools. The entrance of the 
Reformers into Leipsic was triumphal. Carolstad, 
in a chariot and alone, led the way. The Prince of 
Pomerania came next, with Luther and Melancthon 
at his side. A train of the students of Luther's 
university, wearing armour ! followed ; and closed a 
procession, emblematic of that singular mixture of 
religion and the sword which was yet to convulse the 
civilised world. 

The assembly was worthy of this pomp, and com- 
prehended all the leading individuals of the city and 
province—the Duke's counsellors; the doctors and 
graduates of the university ; the magistrates of Leip- 
sic ; with a crowd of other important persons. The 
argument was conducted with the solemnity of a 
contest between the two faiths. Scribes were ap- 
pointed to take down the discussion ; and the whole 
ceremony was formally opened by an oration from 
Moselanus, a scholar of distinguished name. 



LUTHER. 27 1 

Yet this debate, ushered in with such formidable 
preparation, came to nothing. For, by a singularly 
injudicious line of conduct, Carolostadius, instead of 
forcing his antagonist to the testimony of Scripture, 
and adhering to those great features of inspiration 
which require only to be shown, to be acknowledged, 
suffered himself to be led into the endless difficulties 
of the doctrines of the ' divine purposes.' During 
an entire week, which exhausted the patience of all 
the hearers, the two disputants wasted their acute- 
ness on the mysteries of * Fate and Freewill ; ' 
exhibited their learning in recriminations from the 
Fathers, and sought for triumph in bewildering each 
other in labyrinths wherein the human intellect was 
never able to find the clue. The manlier minds 
present saw the absurdity of both; and even Me- 
lancthon hazarded the declaration, that the argu- 
ment gave him the most practical evidence of what 
the ancients termed ' sophistry/ Eckius himself 
grew wearied ; and summarily closed the struggle by 
the bold manoeuvre of declaring that Carolostadius 
had, without knowing it, come over to his opinion. 
But the Popish champion had contemplated a nobler 
antagonist. From the beginning, it was his ambition 
to have disputed with Luther ; and before his argu- 
ment with Carolostad, he had addressed Luther ; 
enquiring whether the report were true, that he had 
refused to join in the controversy ? The reply was, 
* that he was disqualified from taking a part, without 



272 LUTHER, 

the Duke's protection.' The protection was at 
length obtained, and the controversy began, with a 
vigour proportioned to the fame of the two leading 
theologians of Germany. 

Luther had published thirteen propositions, which 
had been impugned by Eckius under as many heads, 
comprehending the chief theorems of purgatory, 
penitence, indulgences, &c. The pope's supremacy 
was artfully adopted in the commencement of the 
disputation by Eckius, with the double purpose of 
conciliating the favours of the popedom, and of 
embarrassing an adversary, who had always exhi- 
bited a peculiar reluctance to declare against the 
authority of Rome. The universal episcopacy of the 
pope was equally allowed by both. But there was a 
marked difference in the foundation — Eckius de- 
claring that this episcopacy originated in divine autho- 
rity ; Luther unhesitatingly pledging himself to the 
proof that it was altogether human. The Fathers 
were largely appealed to by the Romish advocate; but 
the great Reformer was not to be baffled by false 
quotation and oblique evidence, — the subtle secret of 
Romish controversy in all ages : he took the volumes 
into his own hands, and shewed the shadowy and 
feeble grounds on which these venerable writers were 
presumed to have authorised the Romish dominion. 
But this toil of quotation threatened to be endless ; 
and after five days of enquiry, this part of the debate 
was closed by mutual consent, and the question of 



LUTHER. 273 

purgatory was begun. Indulgences were the next 
point ; and here Eckius unexpectedly, but fully, 
joined his opponent in the ridicule of this most 
offensive doctrine. The doctrine of repentance con- 
cluded the debate, which, after eleven days of conti- 
nued discussion, finally closed on the 15th of July, 
1519. 

Yet the ceremonial was not closed by the cessa- 
tion of the argument ; and as if to give a model of 
the whole stateliness of controversy in those days, 
the decision was referred to the two great authorities 
of law and literature, the universities of Paris and 
Erfurt, with the reserve of an appeal to the last 
supreme authority, a general council. # 

Our chief record of this famous debate is by Me- 
lancthon, who speaks with high praise of the 
ability displayed on all sides ; giving Carolstad the 
merits of zeal and knowledge ; Eckius, of literature 
and variety and promptness of argument ; and Luther, 
of force, manliness, and learning. But if the testimony 
of a brother reformer to Luther's triumph should be 
doubted, we have unequivocal evidence in the facts 
of its result; many of the students of Leipsic leaving 
their university for that of Luther ;f and Eckius 
immediately making a formal application to the 
Elector Frederic, ' that his adversary's books should 
be burnt.' The man who converts his hearers, and 

* Luther, Op. vol. I. Sleid, lib. 1. Kottiner. de Prsedest. lib. 4. 
t Seckend. p. 92. 



274 LUTHER. 

drives his adversary into the folly of appealing to 
violence, has gained all the victory that reason and 
right can gain. 

The opinion of the Universities was partially and 
tardily given. Louvain and Cologne, strongholds of 
Popish influence, decided against Luther. Paris, 
where the Popedom was always less influential, took 
two years to decide, and then evaded the question ; by 
passing sentence merely on some theses from Luther's 
volumes, without alluding to his name. Leipsic, best 
acquainted with the controversy, yet probably 
equally reluctant to offend the Popedom, and to re- 
sist public opinion, came to no decision. 

But the renowned leader of the Reformation was 
to limit his struggles and his triumphs no more to 
the subordinate ministers of superstition on the ob- 
scure stage of a German province ; but to grapple 
with the whole power of Rome, and, in the presence 
of mankind, give it that overthrow from which it has 
never recovered. 

Miltitz, the dexterous and learned envoy of the 
Papacy, had steadily pursued his purpose of bringing 
Luther to the acknowledgment of the Papal au- 
thority, in all matters human and divine. After 
some negociation, he had induced the Augustine 
monks to send a deputation to their brother, request- 
ing him to make this acknowledgment by letter, as 
the most authentic form. The request was complied 
with, and the letter was prefixed to his ' Treatise of 



LUTHER. 21 C) 

Christian Liberty,' — a brief description of the privi- 
leges annexed to Christian feelings, under the two 
heads, — ' That the Christian is the freest of men, and 
subject to none ; ' and, * That the Christian is the 
most ready to serve all, and be subject to all/ But 
the letter is the more important document, and 
strongly expresses at once the writer's habitual 
deference for the person of the Pope, and his grow- 
ing contempt for the corruptions surrounding the 
Papal throne. 

* By means of the impious flatterers of your Holi- 
ness, who, without cause, are full of wrath against 
me, I have been compelled to appeal from the See 
of Rome to a General Council. But my affection 
for your Holiness has never been alienated, though 
I begin to despise and triumph over those who had 
sought to terrify me by the majesty of your authority. 
One thing, however, I cannot despise, and that is the 
cause of my writing this letter, — I mean the blame 
thrown on me for reflecting on your Holiness in 
person.' 

After contradicting this charge, he proceeds to 
state the actual object of his writings : ' I have in- 
veighed sharply against unchristian doctrines; and 
reproved my adversaries severely, not for rudeness, 
but impiety. 

' So far from being ashamed of this, my purpose 
is, to despise the judgment of men, and to persevere 
in this vehemence of zeal, after the example of Christ. 
t 2 



276 LUTHER. 

The multitude of flatterers has rendered the ears of 
our age so delicate, that as soon as we find that our 
sentiments are not approved of, we immediately ex- 
claim, that we are slandered ; and when we find our- 
selves unable to resist truth, we accuse our adver- 
saries of detraction. But, let me ask, of what use 
were salt, if it were not pungent ? or of the point of 
a sword, if it did not wound ? Cursed be the man 
who doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully !' 

He then boldly turns on the flagitiousness of the 
agents and ministers of Rome. 

' I have resisted, and shall continue to resist, what 
is called the court of Rome, as long as the spirit of 
faith shall live in me. Neither your Holiness, nor 
any one, will deny, that it is more corrupt than 
Babylon or Sodom ; and sunk, as I understand, in 
the most deplorable, desperate, and avowed impiety. 
I lament that, under the sanction of your name, and 
under the pretext of the good of the church, the 
people of Christ should be made a laughing-stock.' 
' Not that I attempt impossibilities, or expect that 
the endeavours of an individual can accomplish any 
thing in opposition to so many flatterers in that 
Babel. But I consider myself a debtor to my fellow 
men, for whose welfare it behoves me to be solicitous ; 
so that those Roman pests may at least destroy a 
smaller number, and in a more humane manner. 
During many years nothing has been poured on the 
world, but monsters in body and mind, along with 



LUTHER. 277 

the worst examples of the worst actions.' ' It is 
clear as day, that the church of Rome, in former 
ages the most holy of churches, has become a den of 
thieves, a scene of prostitution, the kingdom of sin, 
death, and hell. So that greater wickedness is not 
to be conceived even under Antichrist himself.' 

This was the manifesto of that memorable war in 
which Luther was to lead the powers jof European 
knowledge, liberty, and religion, against the haughty 
domination of the Popedom. It roused the whole 
wrath of the Vatican. A German monk had dis- 
played the superhuman audacity to assault the Su- 
preme Lord of the faithful, the * Vicar of Christ on 
Earth ; ' the holder of the twofold sword of temporal 
and spiritual empire ! The whole hierarchy was in 
an uproar. An assembly of cardinals, canonists, and 
theologians, was instantly summoned, and the thun- 
ders which had awed so many monarchs, were to be 
levelled at the head of the revolter. But the council 
suddenly felt that the old activity of Romish ven- 
geance could not now be let loose with the old suc- 
cess ; their debates were long and perplexed ; and the 
only point on which they agreed was the guilt of the 
offender, which they pronounced to be impiety of 
the most daring and glaring kind. Still, the theolo- 
gians were retarded in their indignation by the 
canonists ; who reasoned, that no notoriety of crime 
ought to prevent a man from being heard in his own 
defence. The rescript was eventually divided into 



278 LUTHER. 

three heads. By the first, the doctrine was con- 
demned ; by the second, the books were ordered to 
be burnt ; and by the third, Luther was summoned 
to appear in due season, to stand his trial in Rome. 
No less than forty-one heresies were proclaimed as 
the evil fruit of his labours ; and he was compared 
with Porphyry, as an open antagonist to the truth of 
the gospel. 

But punishment of a more practical nature was 
haughtily prepared for the criminal and his partisans ; 
and the wrath of Rome had large and fierce variety of 
vengeance. Luther, and all enlisted in his opinions, 
were laid under ban. By this, they were in an instant 
cut off from all rights, natural and acquired, pronoun- 
ced guilty of high treason, incapable of any legal act, 
of property, freedom, or worship, infamous when they 
lived, infamous when they died, and unfit for Christ- 
ian burial. The name of the man, and the memory 
of his revolt, were equally to be sunk in contemptuous 
oblivion. His books were to be burnt. It was made 
a crime to publish, to preach, or even to read his 
works. The heresiarch himself was ordered to attend, 
and take his trial at Rome, within two months ; and, 
in case of disobedience, the civil and spiritual au- 
thorities alike were commanded to seize him and his 
adherents, and send them to Rome. 

Those are the testimonies of history ; and from 
those nothing but frenzy will disdain to be taught ; as 
nothing but political delusion will dare to question 



LUTHER. 219 

their practical warning. We have here the Papacy 
speaking without fear the sentiments which fear only 
can ever make it suppress, and which are to it as the 
blood is to the heart, and the marrow to the bone. 
Let the Papist who, among us, would boast of his 
passion for general liberty, of his zeal for general 
toleration, or of his faithful separation of the alle- 
giance due to his own sovereign from the homage 
paid to the head of his church, — read the Bull pub- 
lished against Luther ; and ask himself, whether he 
has not been the tool of a palpable and insolent im- 
posture ? Let the friends of truth take this docu- 
ment into their hands, and ask those who are still 
undeceived, — whether human language can express a 
sterner spirit of tyranny over the individual, a 
haughtier usurpation over states, a more unhesitating 
and remorseless determination to pursue to blood 
and ruin every opinion that is not moulded into the 
shape prescribed by Rome ? 

Luther's sole crime had been the attempt to think 
for himself on points essential to the first interests of 
man. He had before him the Scriptures, and he had 
laboured to understand the great code by which he 
was to be judged at the tribunal, not of man, but 
of the Eternal. He had offered no human resistance 
to the authority of his spiritual superiors. He had 
merely examined the Bible for himself; as every man 
is bound to do by the express command of inspira- 
tion, and as every man obviously must do, who de- 



280 LUTHER. 

sires to attain that solid and heartfelt conviction of 
its value, without which practical virtue is a phan- 
tasy. He was no rebel, but an inquirer ; no preach- 
er of insolent dogmatism and proud self-authority, but 
a scholar and a reasoner ; no sceptic, but " ready to 
give a reason of the faith that was in him." His per- 
sonal character was touched by no impurity. He stood 
open to the eyes of mankind, and defied them to dis- 
cover a stain. Yet this man of learning, integrity, and 
genius, was to be dragged through the whole course 
of the deepest punishments reserved for the traitor 
and the murderer ; consigned to the scaffold ; and 
then, stript of every hope which Rome could strip 
from the disembodied spirit, consigned in her furious 
creed to eternal ruin ! 

On earth his memory was to be obliterated, his la- 
bours of genius and learning were to be destroyed, and 
his dead body was to be deprived of those rites which 
Rome had pronounced indispensable to the repose of 
the soul. And, for the purposes of this atrocious 
vengeance, the rights of all temporal sovereigns were 
to be invaded. No matter to what king Luther was 
the subject ; he was declared the subject of a still 
superior king, whose dominion extended to every cor- 
ner of the earth ; the laws of nations were to be 
dust and air before the paramount law of Popery ; 
neither innocence before the tribunals of his own 
country, nor allegiance to his own sovereign, nor 
the will of that sovereign himself, could be suf- 



LUTHER. 281 

fered to stand between the slave and that towering 
and stupendous presumption, which, seating itself on 
' the throne of God, made itself be worshipped as 
God/ 

The Bull was now to be published in Germany, and 
Eckius, with the double activity of a beaten dispu- 
tant, and of a candidate for preferment, undertook 
the mission. His character had been long before 
painted by the strong discrimination of Luther : 
' Eckius is totally treacherous, and incapable of the 
obligations of amity.' * At Rome, and in his private 
correspondence, he continually boasted of his ser- 
vices to the papacy, of his confidential intercourse 
with the Pope, and of the light which he had been the 
first to throw on the ' unpardonable guilt ' of the new 
opinions. Still in Germany he professed the strong 
reluctance with which he had undertaken the publi- 
cation of the Bull. But it is difficult for the most 
acute treachery to be always on its guard ; some of 
those wily letters fell into the hands of the reformers, 
were published by Luther with notes, and Eckius 
was shewn to be what he was, a traitor and a 
tool. 

A letter from the sagacious Miltitz is preserved, 
which, stating the arrival of the popish missionary, 
is curious, as a memorial of the times.f 

1 I found Eckius at Leipsic, very clamorous and 

* ' Totus infidus est, ctapcrte rupit amicitise jura. 1 t Seek. p. 116, 



282 LUTHER. 

full of threats : I invited him to an entertainment, 
and employed every means in my power to discover 
what he proposed to do. After he had drunk 
freely, he began to relate, in pompous terms, the 
commission which he had received from Rome, and 
the means by which he was to bring Luther to obe- 
dience. He had caused the bull to be published in 
Misnia on the 21st of September, at Mersburgon the 
25th, and at Brandenburg on the 29th. He was in 
the habit of displaying the Bull with great pomp. 
He lodged with the public commissary, and Duke 
George ordered the senate to present him with a 
gilt cup, and a considerable sum of money. 

• But notwithstanding the Bull itself, and the 
pledge of public safety given to him, some young men 
of family affixed, on the 29th of September, in no 
less than ten places, bills containing threats against 
him. Terrified by those, he took refuge in the 
monastery of St. Paul, and refused to be seen. He 
complained to Caesar Pflugius, and obtained a man- 
date from the rector of the university, enjoining the 
young men to be quiet ; but all to no purpose. 

* They have composed ballads on him, which they 
sing through the streets, sending to the monastery 
daily intimations of their hostility. More than one 
hundred and fifty of the Wittemberg students are 
here, who are very much incensed against him.' He 
subsequently adds, that the startled missionary finally 
fled by night to Fribourg. 



LUTHER. 283 

This inauspicious commencement was never reco- 
vered. The power of reason was arrayed against 
the violence of the papal anathema. The crimes of 
the monkish orders, and the grossness of manners, 
even among the higher ranks of the popish clergy, 
had long disgusted the people. When at last a 
great reasoner arose, and demanded why those things 
should be, and whether they were sanctioned by 
Scripture ; the eyes and understandings of men fol- 
lowed him with the eagerness of newly-awakened 
faculties. The papal sceptre was from that hour the 
staff of the magician no more — the day of darkness 
and of the things of darkness was gone; the true 
prophet stood in the presence of the kings of the 
earth against the pompous worker of delusions ; the 
Reformation came, in its simplicity, but bearing the 
commission of God ; and as Moses put to shame the 
spells of the Egyptians ; it extinguished the false 
miracles of Rome, and led forth the people to a liberty 
that could never have been achieved by man alone. 

The public opinion now sustained the natural 
disgust of the German sovereigns. The Elector of 
Saxony declared himself wholly adverse to the pro- 
mulgation of the bull in his territories. The Elector 
of Brandenburg, and Albert of Mecklenburg, took 
the public opportunity of their passing through Wit- 
temberg, on the way to so important an exercise of 
their functions as the emperor's coronation, to hold 
a long and friendly conference with Luther. He 



284 LUTHER. 

received, from quarters of high rank, assurances of 
protection, and offers of asylum, in case of his being 
obliged to retire from Saxony. The people ex- 
pressed their feelings by the most unmeasured 
menaces against the agent employed to promulgate 
the Bull. Even the high ecclesiastics and universities 
shrank from the responsibility. The bishop of Bam- 
berg sheltered himself under a verbal criticism, 
from publishing it in his diocese. At Louvain* 
though the heads of the university burned Luther's 
books, a strong party of the students and people 
insisted on burning a number of the works of his 
opponents at the same time. At Mentz, the burn- 
ers of his books were in hazard of their lives. At 
Erfurt, the students tore the copy of the bull, and 
flung it into the river ; * the rector of the university 
publicly giving his sanction to their pulling down 
every similar copy, and opposing Luther's enemies 
by all the means in their power. The bishop of 
Brandenburg dared not publish it. And even in the 
immediate presence of the Romish See, in Venice 
and Bologna, the doctrines of the Reformation were 
felt and honoured. 

Luther's letter on this formidable trial of his own 
strength, and of the fidelity of his friends, exhibits a 
loftiness and determination worthy of his immortal 
cause. It is addressed to Spalatin. 

* Scult. Ann. Evang. 1520. 



LUTHER. 285 

' The pope's bull has come at last. Eckius 
brought it. We are writing here many things to the 
pope concerning it. For my own part, I hold it in 
contempt, and attack it as impious and false, like 
Eckius in all things. Christ himself is evidently 
condemned by it. No reason is assigned for sum- 
moning me to a recantation, instead of a trial. They 
are full of fury, blindness, and madness. They nei- 
ther comprehend nor reflect on the consequences. 

' I shall treat the pope's name with delicacy, and 
conduct myself as if I considered it a false and forged 
bull, though I believe it to be genuine. How 
anxiously do I wish that the emperor had the cou- 
rage to prove himself a man, and in defence of 
Christ, attack those emissaries of Satan. 

' For my part, I do not regard my personal safety, 
let the will of the Lord be done. 

* Nor do I know what course should be taken by 
the Elector ; and, perhaps, it may appear to him 
more for my interest that he should suppress his 
sentiments for a season. The bull is held in as 
great contempt at Leipsic as Eckius himself. Let 
us therefore be cautious, lest he acquire consequence 
by our opposition, for, if left to himself, he must 
fall. 

' I send you a copy of the Bull, that you may see 
what monsters there are in Rome. If those men 
are destined to rule us, neither the faith nor the 
church have the least security. I rejoice that it has 



286 LUTHER. 

fallen to my lot to suffer hardships for the best of 
causes, but I am not worthy of such a trial. I am 
now much more at liberty than before, being fully 
persuaded that the pope is Antichrist, and that I 
have discovered the seat of Satan. 

f May God preserve his children from being de- 
ceived by the pope's impious pretensions. Erasmus 
tells me, that the emperor's court is crowded with 
creatures, who are tyrants and beggars; so that 
nothing satisfactory is to be expected from Charles. 
This needs not surprise us ; l put not thy trust in 
princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no 
stay.'" 

The growing conviction that the papacy was Anti- 
christ, not only lightened the burden of opposition 
in Luther's conscience, but urged him to the public 
disclosure of his discovery. In defiance of the old 
anathemas pronounced against all appeal from the 
pope to a general council, he boldly made that 
appeal ; and in his protest on this occasion, launched 
out into the strongest epithets of scorn. 

1 Leo X. in impia sua tyrannide induratus perse- 
verat. — Iniquus, temerarius, tyrannicus judex. — Hse- 
reticus et Apostata. — Antichristus, blasphemus, su- 
perbus contemptor sanctae ecclesiae Dei.' * 

Cologne, Louvain, and the Vatican, had burned 
his books, and he now unhesitatingly retaliated the 

* Luth. ii. 122. 



LUTHER. 287 

sentence of heresy. On his public notice of burning 
the Romish decretals at Wittemberg, a vast con- 
course assembled, to witness this solemn and final 
act of abjuration. On the 10th of December, 1519, 
the population of the country and city, forming 
themselves into regular divisions, marched to the 
spot selected for the ceremony. A small funeral pile 
was erected in the centre, and set on fire by one of 
the chief members of the university. Luther then 
advanced, bearing Gratian's Abridgment of the 
Canon Law, which, with the Decretals, the Clemen- 
tines and Extravagantes, and last, the Bull of Leo, 
he cast into the flames, exclaiming, ' Because ye 
have troubled the body of the Lord, therefore let 
eternal fire trouble you.' He then moved to the 
city, with the multitude silently marching behind 
him. 

This ceremony, and all ceremonies, would be tri- 
vial, but for its meaning. In this point of view 
nothing could be more important. The burning of 
the Papal law was the open proclamation of endless 
resistance to the popedom. The bridge was now 
cut down between Luther and reconciliation. The 
sword was drawn, and the scabbard was flung away 
for ever. 

To prevent all doubt of his motives and purposes, 
Luther now published ' Reasons ' for the burning of 
the books. In this work, he summoned his learned 
countrymen to examine for themselves the body of 



288 LUTHER. 

papal law, divesting their minds of the prejudices 
that had so long humbled mankind before the 
Romish throne, and, scorning the mysteries in which 
the popedom had laboured to involve Christianity. 
Declaring the doctrines of the Canon law ( abomi- 
nable and poisonous,' he proceeded to give his evi- 
dence^ in the shape of thirty Articles. His reproba- 
tion of the guilty system is bold, eloquent, and 
learned. He is sometimes so strongly wrought upon 
by its arrogance, that he bursts into exclamation. 
' Never have the popes vanquished, by either Scrip- 
ture or argument, any one who has spoken or wTitten 
against them. Their alternative has been to excom- 
municate, burn, and destroy, through kings, princes, 
and the other slaves of the papacy.' 

Well might a man of sense and virtue exclaim against 
a code, which actually placed a human being in pos- 
session of the homage of God. * The pope,' says 
the Canon law, ( is God upon earth, superior to 
all belonging to heaven and earth, whether spiritual 
or temporal. All things belong to the pope, and to 
him no one shall dare to say, What doest thou ? ' * 

The bull of 1520 had failed ; its only result being 
to increase the strength of the Reformation. A still 
more decisive measure was resolved on ; in' January 
1521, a Bull was issued, executing the menace of the 
former, and declaring Luther excommunicated. But 

* Luth. ii. 122. 



LUTHER. 289 

lie defied the measure, as he had scorned the threat ; 
and by his defiance rose into additional popular 
respect. That any man in the centre of popish 
Europe could have thus dared, and yet live, is among 
the wonders of the time. But there is no study more 
valuable to the christian, than to trace, through 
the changes and chances of human action, the provi- 
dence that protects the great agents of the divine 
will. A few years earlier, and the reformer must 
have been crushed by the popedom, then in un- 
disturbed power ; but at that period Luther was 
an obscure monk, busied in the ceremonial of his 
cloister. A few years later, and he would have 
found Charles the Fifth trampling down the Elec- 
toral princes ; and would probably have perished in a 
struggle, from which his high spirit disdained to 
withdraw ; and whether he perished in the field, or 
on the scaffold, his death might have been a blow, all 
but fatal to the Reformation. 

But at this exact period, the popedom was com- 
pelled to pause ; by the precariousness of its situation 
between the angry powers of France and Germany. To 
extinguish Luther was impossible, without the active 
interposition of Charles; but all negotiation with 
Germany was looked on with keen jealousy by 
Francis, the sole protector of the papal states against 
the imperial sword. Charles himself, scarcely more 
than twenty years old, naturally shrank from invol- 
ving his new dominions in the fury of civil war ; and, 

u 



290 LUTHER. 

though a bigot and a tyrant by nature, he had still 
both the chain and the sword to forge, before he de- 
clared himself the public antagonist of Protestantism. 

Luther was now to stand for the faith in the pre- 
sence of the most exalted tribunal of Europe — the 
first assembly of the German princes held by the 
emperor. He was summoned to attend in the city 
of Worms. 

The Elector Frederic, who seems to have at all 
times singularly tempered his respect for authority 
with a regard for Luther's safety, had previously 
informed him of the summons, through his friend 
Spalatin ; and asked, whether he would venture to 
brave the influence of Rome? The reply was 
heroic : 

( I shall not hesitate to go ; for I shall consider 
the summons of the emperor as proceeding from the 
will of God. 

' If personal hurt be offered, a not unlikely thing, 
I shall commend my cause to the God who delivered 
the three children from the fiery furnace. Should it 
not seem meet to God to preserve me, of what 
moment is my life, compared with the life and suf- 
ferings of Christ ? 

' It is not for me to determine, whether the 
danger to the gospel be greater or less by my life or 
death. The truth of God is a rock of offence, placed 
for the rising and falling of many in Israel. 

' My chief duty is, to pray that Charles may not 



LUTHER. 891 

stain his government, at the outset, with my blood 
or his own. Let me rather die by the hands of the 
Romanists, lest he and all connected with him 
should be involved in sorrow, by a guilty participa- 
tion. You well remember what befel the Emperor 
Sigismund, — after the murder of Huss nothing suc- 
ceeded with him. He died without a son ; and 
Lladislaus, his grandson, soon followed him to the 
grave ; so that his name became extinct in a single 
generation. His wife Barbara was a disgrace to the 
name of queen. 

( But, if it be determined that I am to be deli- 
vered, not only to the pope, but to the gentiles, let 
the Lord's will be done. I have now told you my 
mind fully. Your conjectures, as to me, are correct 
in every thing, except in the chance of my flight or 
recantation. I am unwilling to fly, but much more 
unwilling to recant. May the Lord Jesus send me 
support, for I can do nothing without putting in 
hazard the piety and salvation of many persons.' 

This admirable declaration, which combines, in 
the highest degree, the fortitude of the man with the 
resignation of the Christian, was followed by a letter 
to the Elector ; relative to the safe-conduct which 
Frederic had insisted on procuring for him, before 
his attendance on the Imperial summons. 

■ As to myself, I am most ready to appear at the 
Imperial Diet of Worms, before equitable, learned, 
and good judges ; provided I obtain a sufficient secu- 
u 2 



292 LUTHER. 

rity and safe-conduct for both going and returning. 
By God's help, I shall make it appear, to the con- 
viction of all, that I have not been actuated by wil- 
fulness nor by selfishness, but that whatever I have 
taught, or written, has proceeded from my con- 
science, and from an ardour for the salvation of the 
Catholic Church, and the extirpation of the most 
dangerous abuses and superstitions.' 

The Emperor at last, on the 6th of March, issued 
the summons for his appearance, within twenty-one 
days ; guaranteeing his safety on his journey ; a gua- 
rantee which was reinforced by the pledges of the 
sovereigns through whose territories his road lay. 
Its language shewed the importance to which the 
Monk of Wittemberg had risen in the eyes of the 
proudest government of the world. The Emperor's 
rescript was addressed, 

' Carolus, Dei Gratia Romanorum Tmperator, Au- 
gustus, &c. &c. 

' Honorabili nostro, dilecto, devoto, Doctori Mar- 
tino Luthero,' &c. &c. And to an attempt of the 
Papal agents to censure him, by submitting his works 
to the magistrates, the College of the Empire re- 
plied, that no such measure could be taken until the 
writer was present to make their defence. 

Luther now commenced the most memorable of 
his journeys ; and if the mind of a man, full of an 
immortal cause, could have found room for a feeling 
of human triumph, he might have felt singular exul- 



LUTHER. 2 l JS 

tation. He bore the national heart along with him. 
The most unusual marks of public homage were 
offered to him as he passed along; thousands and 
tens of thousands revered and blessed him as the 
visible instrument of Heaven in restoring them to its 
knowledge ; the crowd honoured his learning, purity, 
and fortitude ; and even his most declared enemies 
were forced to respect the powers of mind that were 
already shaking the throne of tyranny and Rome. 

The senate of Wittemberg provided him with a 
conveyance. Along his road he received the highest 
marks of public attention. At Erfurt the whole 
population came out to meet him ; and there he 
preached on * Justification,' and on ' The Corrup- 
tions of the Priesthood.' Instead of shrinking as he 
approached the place of trial, his determination be- 
came even more fixed. In his letter from Frankfort 
to Spalatin, he says — 

' I have been indisposed ever since I left Eisenach, 
and am not yet recovered. The mandate of Charles 
was issued, I understand, to affright me ; but Christ 
is alive, and I shall enter Worms in spite of the gates 
of hell, and the powers of the air. I am resolved to 
meet Satan, and to strike him with terror.' 

His friends did not share his intrepidity. They 
dreaded to see him in the hands of power. But 
their letters produced no other result than the famous 
exclamation, * To Worms I will go, if there were as 
many devils there as tiles on the houses!' 



294 LUTHER. 

On the 16th of April, Luther entered this city of 
his death or triumph. His entrance was striking and 
solemn. Attired in his friar's cowl, and seated in an 
open chariot, with the Imperial herald on horseback 
leading the way, he was escorted by a procession of 
Saxon nobles and the people. A multitude received 
him at the door of his residence ; and the chief 
strangers of rank in the city immediately waited on 
him, from motives of respect or curiosity, to see one 
who had so suddenly become the most remarkable 
man of his time. 

On the next day he was summoned to attend the 
Diet. The crowd was now so great, that the streets 
were rendered impassable ; and the only access to the 
hall of the Diet was through gardens and private 
houses. Every roof from which a view could be 
obtained, was covered with spectators : the German 
apathy was completely roused, and Luther was the 
hope, the admiration, or the fear, of all. 

At the Diet two questions were proposed to him 
by the Official of the Archbishop of Treves : — 

• Whether he avowed himself the author of the 
books bearing his name V and ( whether he was dis- 
posed to retract, or persist in their contents V 

To the former, Luther at once answered in the 
affirmative. To the latter, he demanded, as is pre- 
sumed, by the advice of his counsel, * that time 
should be given for his reply.' The meeting was 
then adjourned ; many voices crying out to him, not 



LUTHER. 295 

to be afraid of those who could ' kill the body, but 
not the soul.' 

On his entering the hall next day, the 18th, he 
was again questioned by the Official, as to his avowal 
of the opinions contained in his volumes. Luther, 
now called upon to give a reason of the faith that 
was in him, gave it with the boldness of the great 
Apostle, whom, in his redemption from personal 
darkness, in his perils, in his labours, and in his 
lofty and holy energy of soul, he so strongly resem- 
bled. Like Paul, he stood before kings and high- 
priests, before tyrants and bigots, and, like him, and 
sustained by the hand which had sustained him, he 
put tyranny and bigotry to shame. 

His answer first adverted to the nature of his doc- 
trines ; which he shewed to be deductions from the 
plainest principles of Christianity. On the formid- 
able topic of the Papacy, he boldly declared, that he 
would be guilty of the deepest baseness, in disavow- 
ing declarations so fully founded on the words of Scrip- 
ture, and the notorious corruptions of the Romish 
Church. He demanded, that his guilt should be 
proved, or his innocence admitted. In the words of 
our Lord — ' If I have spoken evil, bear witness of 
the evil ; but if well, why smitest thou me V 

The Official, who bore the ominous name of Ec- 
kius, impatiently declared that Luther had not an- 
swered his question ; and demanded whether he was 
ready to recant ? 



296 LUTHER. 

' I have only to say/ was the firm answer, { that 
unless I shall be convinced by Scripture, (for I can 
put no faith in Popes and Councils, as it is evident 
that they have frequently erred, and even contra- 
dicted each other,) unless my conscience shall be 
convinced by the word of God, I neither will nor can 
recant; since it is unworthy of an honest man to act 
contrary to his own conviction. Here I stand ? it is 
impossible for me to act otherwise ; — so help me 
God!' 

This boldness offended the young Emperor ; and, 
on the next day, Charles evinced his impatience by 
issuing an excommunication against the Monk who 
had thus dared to brave the mightiest potentate of 
Europe in his own council. But the rescript had 
been too rashly launched, to strike a man already so 
high an object of public honour and admiration. 
The princes of the Empire felt no desire to give 
effect to a document promulgated without their con- 
sent. The multitude continued to increase round 
the residence of Luther, and persons of the first 
rank had no hesitation in visiting him, in defiance of 
the excommunication. 

In order to lessen the popular odium of this act of 
unqualified tyranny, the excommunication Was now 
suspended for three days ; during which the Arch- 
bishop of Treves attempted to subdue him by per- 
suasion. The attempt failed, like all the rest ; and 
his final answer was: — * I will not recant, unless I 



LUTHER. 297 

am convinced by Scripture, and by Scripture alone. 
If this work be of men, as said Gamaliel, it will come 
to nought ; but, if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow 
it.' The Archbishop now abandoned the contro- 
versy ; the safe conduct for twenty-one days was 
given, and Luther, accompanied by the Imperial 
herald, set out for Wittemberg. 

The arguments of Rome had been signally baffled 
in these conferences ; but she had means in reserve 
which had oftener achieved her victories. The part- 
ing words of the Official pronounced, that ' the Em- 
peror, the defender of the Catholic faith, was deter- 
mined to do his duty ;' and the menace was realized 
in an Imperial decree, of the following month, de- 
claring Luther a schismatic and heretic, and placing 
him under the ban of the Empire — a right being thus 
given to all men to seize his person and property, 
and those of his adherents. But the execution of 
this decree was defeated by a circumstance strongly 
displaying the regard of the Elector Frederic for his 
illustrious subject. 

The Imperial herald, who had escorted Luther as 
far as Friedberg, had scarcely left him, when, as he 
was travelling along the border of the Thuringian 
forest, he was seized, near the village of Schweina, 
by a party of horsemen in masks ; and thence hur- 
ried back through the forest to the castle of Wart- 
burg, an old residence of the Thuringian Landgraves, 
among the mountains near Eisenach. This singu- 



298 LUTHER. 

Jar mode of securing the person, probably saved the 
life, of the great Reformer. 

Yet the solitude to which he was necessarily con- 
demned, until some change should be wrought in the 
Emperor, soon wearied the active spirit that had 
been, for many years, moving among the busiest cir- 
cles of men ; and Luther would have gladly run the 
hazard of returning to Wittemberg. The monotony 
of his seclusion, the change of his habits, and his 
natural dislike to the appearance of a constraint, 
which to the last had something of mystery which it 
was difficult to solve ; might have been sufficient to 
excite his impatience. But he had the higher mo- 
tive, of dread lest his absence at this most critical 
time of young Protestantism might either expose the 
Church to hazard, or dishonour his cause by the ap- 
pearance of having abandoned it for personal consi- 
derations. The latter feeling seems to have peculiarly 
oppressed him. He writes to Melancthon — 

? For the glory of the Scriptures, and the consola- 
tion of mankind, I would rather submit to a violent 
death, than that you should think me languid in the 
cause. Even though I should perish, the word of 
of God shall not perish ; and you, I hope, like an- 
other Elisha, would succeed Elijah. 

" If the Pope proceed to attack all who are of my 
sentiments, Germany must be involved in tumult ; 
and the sooner the attempt is made, the sooner will 
he and his abettors be defeated.' 



LUTHER. 299 

But this solitude was not unproductive. He oc- 
cupied his time in study, and from the mountain- for- 
tress of Wartburg sent forth a succession of powerful 
performances, which he would probably never have 
found leisure to produce in the whirl of active life. His 
* Tract on Auricular Confession,' shewing the cor- 
ruption of a custom of the primitive church into an 
instrument of cupidity and avarice — his ( Notes on 
the Gospels' — his ' Letter to the Students of Erfurt,' 
on disrespect to the clergy — and his memorable work 
on the guilt and folly of Monastic Vows, attest his 
diligence ; while, from the utter obscurity of his 
retreat, and the popular sympathy felt for the 
sufferings of the man and the minister, they 
descended with a vast increase of force among the 
nation. 

At length news came from Wittemberg which 
made him brave the chances of Imperial violence. 
A professor of canon law had been appointed in the 
university. Against this law, as the ancient ally of 
the Popedom, Luther had waged the most determined 
hostility ; and the appointment was too like a tri- 
umph of the evil influence, to let him lie tranquilly 
upon his pillow. He suddenly appeared at Wittem- 
berg, ready to meet the chain or the stake, in ho- 
nour of the truth. But there he gladly found that his 
opinions had taken too firm root to be easily over- 
powered ; and that they were even producing results 
of the first practical good. His Augustinian bre- 



300 LUTHER. 

thren had already abolished private masses, one of 
the most lucrative resources of the Romish ritual ; 
and begging for the order, the monkish dress, and 
the perpetuity of the monkish vows, were given up 
at the same time. 

A singular antagonist was now to increase Lu- 
ther's celebrity. Henry VIII., jealous of fame in 
every form, undertook the hazardous task of over- 
whelming a man, against whom no adversary had 
hitherto been able to stand. Henry's answer to the 
book on f The Babylonish Captivity of the Church,' 
now remains only as one of the idle monuments of 
an age of scholastic folly. But Rome, little suspect- 
ing the temperament of the man on whom she 
lavished her praise, received his ( Defence of the 
Seven Sacraments' with grateful pomp. The volume 
was accepted in full conclave, and the title of * De- 
fender of the Faith' was conferred, to swell for ever 
the honours of the British diadem. The title was 
scarcely given, when Henry's defiance turned the 
short-sightedness of the great Infallible into the 
laughter of the world. 

Luther, strong in the strength of his cause, feared 
no man. He answered the monarch even with less 
ceremony than the monk. His reply is learned and 
argumentative ; but, from what peculiar circumstance 
we cannot now distinctly discover, his style is singu- 
larly contemptuous. The controversial habits of the 
age were harsh j and Henry, unhesitating as he was 



LUTHER. 301 

in his epithets, must have been astonished at finding 
himself so closely rivalled. 

In this year Leo died, as was presumed, by 
poison. * 

On Luther's return to Wittemberg, he commenced 
the great work that alone could give stability to his 
cause — the translation of the Bible. The first efforts 
of printing had been employed in the promulgation 
of the Scriptures ; and Germany possessed transla- 
tions of parts of the Bible so far back as the year 
1477. But they were few, repulsive to the eye, and, 
from their rudeness, scarcely less repulsive to the 
understanding, Luther applied himself for a year to 
the study of the original languages; and in 1522, 
commenced his colossal work. His own account of 
his purposes to Spalatin is brief, but clear. ' I trans- 
lated not only John's Gospel, but the whole of the 
New Testament in my Patmos. But Melancthon and 
I have begun to revise the whole of it ; and it will, 
by the blessing of God, do us credit. We sometimes 
need your assistance to direct us to suitable modes of 
expression ; prepare yourself, therefore ; but supply 
us only with such words as are simple, and avoid all 
that are confined in their use to the camp or the 
court. We wish the work to be distinguished by the 
simplicity of its style.' 

St. Matthew's Gospel was published first ; then 

* Ciacon. V. Pont. 1417. 



302 LUTHER, 

St. Mark's ; then the Epistle to the Romans. The 
entire New Testament appeared so early as Septem- 
ber 1522. To promote the circulation, the volume 
was made as cheap as possible ; and the parts were 
also published separately. Luther's still more ar- 
duous labour, the translation of the Old Testament, 
was next and instantly commenced. He thus writes, 
on the 2nd of November, — ( In my translation of the 
Old Testament I am only in Leviticus. It is incon- 
ceivable how much writing letters, business, conver- 
sation, and many other things, have interrupted my 
progress. I am now determined to shut myself up 
and use dispatch, so that the five books of Moses 
may be sent to press by January. 

' We shall print them separately. After that, we 
shall proceed to the historical parts of Scripture, and 
lastly, to the Prophets. The size and price render 
it necessary to make those divisions in the publica- 
tion.' 

The Romish advocates were all in arms on the ap- 
pearance of a work which has been always fatal to 
the delusions of Rome ; but it was received with joy 
by the people, and Luther exultingly saw it spread 
to the borders of the land. This translation still 
stands at the head of all the German versions. Its 
simplicity, force, and dignity, have had no rivals ; 
and like our own authorized version, it is appealed 
to as the noblest example of the old national tongue. 

The Reformation had now triumphed; but its sue- 



Luther. 303 

cess brought with it the usual concomitants of worldly 
fortune. Ambitious minds began to discover in it 
the means of public distinction ; and the first serious 
anxieties which Luther felt, were awakened by the 
spirit of partizanship. Carolostadius had the weakness 
of ambition; and intelligence had reached Wartburg, 
that he was urging himself into a name by rash at- 
tacks on public opinions and public worship. He had 
even gone the length of exciting the populace to tear 
down the images and ornaments in the Popish 
churches ; an act which could only connect its authors 
with riot, and which the progress of knowledge 
would have soon effected without tumult. In a letter 
to Longus, an ecclesiastic of Erfurt, Luther says : — 
1 I am not permitted to come to you ; nor is it 
lawful to tempt God, and unnecessarily to court 
dangers ; since here at Wittemberg I must lay my 
account with a sufficient number ; I who have been 
excommunicated by the Pope, put under the ban of 
the empire, exposed to death on every side, pro- 
tected by none but God.' A subsequent letter to the 
Elector contains almost the language of a man who 
contemplated martyrdom. ' I am of opinion that the 
kindness or opposition of your Highness, and even 
the hatred of the whole world, ought to be only 
secondary considerations in the present peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the Church. Your Highness is master 
of my body and my destiny in this world ; but Christ 
is the Lord of souls. The Gospel which I preach, 



304 LUTHER. 

has its origin with God, and by God's grace neither 
persecution nor death shall wrest it from me. Neither 
cruelty nor terror shall extinguish this light.' * 

The death of Leo X. had opened Rome to the 
intrigues of all the cabinets of Europe. But Charles 
was on the spot, his dominions surrounded the Roman 
states ; he was lord of the opulence of the New 
World, — and he prevailed. The tiara was placed on the 
brow of his former tutor, Adrian, a monk of Utretcht, 
created a cardinal so late as 1517, and one of the 
extraordinary number of thirty-one, whom the late 
Pope, alike the most indolent of men, and the most 
headlong and profligate of politicians, had raised to 
the hat in one day. 

Adrian possessed such learning, and such Chris- 
tianity, as were to be found in convents. And, with 
equal sincerity and feebleness, he commenced the 
purgation of his church. But, the task was too Her- 
culean. The trade of ecclesiastical preferments had 
long been the crying sin of Rome ; with the double 
impolicy of avarice and fear, she had laboured to 
create an interest in the permanency of her estab- 
lishment, by rendering it a resource for the high fami- 
lies of her European empire. The more intelligent 
or intrepid sons of the nobles were destined for the 
prizes of the state and army. The more incapable 
were pensioned on the easy opulence of the immense 

* Secken. p. 57. 



LUTHER. 305 

benefices in the gift of Rome. The result was ine- 
vitable; and contemporary writers exhaust every power 
of language in describing the gross sensuality, the 
shameless ignorance, and the intolerable usurpation, 
nourishing under this flagrant system. The higher 
Ecclesiastics were only more conspicuous examples in 
the Church, of the vices which they had acquired in 
their noble father's halls: the lower ranks of the clerics 
naturally followed the standard set before them ; and 
public ordinances were found necessary to prohibit 
the priesthood from ' meddling in traffic, from fre- 
quenting taverns,' (then the receptacles of every im- 
purity,) and from indulging in the vices, by name, 
to which those taverns offered the especial tempta- 
tion. The new Pope, not improbably stimulated 
by the general outcry for reform, published, as his 
first measure, a * Declaration,' a singular and self- 
condemning document, which had chiefly the effect 
of authenticating the whole of the charge. He began 
with the tiara itself. 

1 Many abominable things/ said this important 
paper, ' have been committed in this holy Chair for 
several years past, — abuses in spiritual things, — ex- 
cesses in the mandates given, — in fine, every thing 
changed for the worse. 

' No wonder that the sickness should descend from 
the head to the members, from the high pontiffs to 
the inferior prelates. In what relates to us, we 
shall endeavour that our court, from which, perhaps, 



306 LUTHER. 

all this evil has proceeded, shall undergo a speedy 
reform. If corruption has of late flowed from it, 
sound doctrine and reformation shall now proceed 
from the same source. To this we shall account our- 
selves the more obliged to attend, as the whole world 
appears most ardently to desire such a reform. 

* I have accepted the Pontificate, that I might re- 
form the spouse of Christ — assist the neglected and 
oppressed — and appropriate to the learned and vir- 
tuous the money which has of late been squandered 
on grooms and stage-players.' * 

This ecclesiastical confession of the vices of the 
Papacy, was followed by a lay declaration scarcely 
inferior in the rank of its authors, and altogether su- 
perior in its practical effect — the long-celebrated 
f Centum Gravamina/ or List of Grievances, drawn 
up by the Diet of the German Princes, to be trans- 
mitted to Rome. It contained a detail of the cor- 
ruptions of the priesthood, and the church system, 
which the princes declared that the iniquity and no- 
toriety of the facts alone compelled them to submit 
to the Pontiff for their speedy reform ; concluding 
by the suggestion of a general Council for the pur- 
pose in Germany. This document becomes the more 
unequivocal, by its proceeding from sovereigns still 
attached to the Popish cause, — one of its sections 
being a confirmation of the Edict of Worms against 
Luther, and another a demand that the preachers of 

* Sleid, 1. 4. 



LUTHER. 307 

the l New Doctrine,' should be suspended from 
their functions. 

Yet those declarations were virtual pleadings on the 
side of Christianity ; and Luther was not asleep 
while Popery was thus unconsciously shearing the 
locks in which the secret of its strength lay, He 
translated Adrian's Rescript into German, and sent 
it, illustrated by his own resistless remarks, to scatter 
light through the world. 

But we must hasten to the close of this great man's 
triumphs. In 1545, he had reached his sixty- 
second year, with a frame, never of peculiar strength, 
and now much exhausted by perpetual labour, and 
the numerous cares which hourly thickened round 
the. leader of the Reformation. His chief associates 
had died before him, or were yielding to age. Zu- 
inglius had perished in battle, and CEcolampadius 
had died of grief for the loss of his admirable friend. 
A painful complaint, probably the result of his 
sedentary habits, had for several years tortured 
Luther, and under its paroxysms he seems to have 
sometimes abandoned the hope or the wish to live. 
Yet, by temperance he continued to retain strength 
of mind and frame, sufficient for the revision of his 
numerous writings, and chiefly of his translation of 
the Scriptures. 

But in this year bis complaint became more de- 
cided, and his constitution, long racked by the stone, 
began evidently to give way. Violent headaches, and 
x 2 



308 LUTHER. 

the decaying sight of one of his eyes, gave symp- 
toms of an event which must soon deprive Protestan- 
tism of its first and ablest friend. But his course was 
loftily completed. He had fought his fight ; he was 
now to receive his crown. 

He had taken a journey to Eisleben, his native 
place, on the application of the Count of Mansfield, 
to arbitrate a dispute relative to the mines. In full 
consciousness of his own infirmities, he had under- 
gone this harassing journey, as a promoter of peace. 

' I write to you,' said he, in a letter to a friend, 
a few days before he set out, ' though I am old, de- 
crepit, inactive, languid, and now with but one eye. 

6 When drawing to the brink of the grave ; I had 
hopes of obtaining a reasonable share of rest ; but I 
continue to be overpowered with writing, preaching, 
and business, in the same manner as if I had not 
discharged my part of those duties in the early period 
of life.' 

The journey was in the depth of a German winter ; 
and by the overflowing of the river Issel, it was pro- 
longed to five days. The effort was too much for his 
feeble frame ; and after various changes of his dis- 
order during three weeks, Luther, on the 18th of 
February, 1546, breathed the last breath of a life, 
devoted to the most glorious duty that Providence 
gives to man, — the promulgation of its owti eternal 
truths, in simplicity, in holiness, and in power. 

The highest honours were paid to his memory. 



LUTHER. • 309 

His body, after lying in state in the principal church, 
was escorted by the principal nobility of the Electo- 
rate on horseback, and an immense concourse of the 
people, on its way to Wittemberg. Wherever it 
stopped, the population of the towns received it with 
tears and prayers ; hymns were sung, and sermons 
were delivered over the remains of their common father 
in the faith. At Wittemberg, the whole university, 
the magistracy, and the people, came out to meet the 
procession ; and the funeral ceremony was begun with 
an oration by Pomeranus, a celebrated divine, and 
closed by a pathetic sermon from Melancthon, His 
picture was afterwards hung up in the hall of the 
university. But the true and imperishable monu- 
ment of Luther is, — the Reformation. 



III. 



SPEECH. 

In acknowledging the Toast of ' Church and State,' given at 
the Anniversary of the City of London Conservative Asso- 
ciation, held in Merchant Tailors' Hall, March, 1840. 

Mr. Chairman. — I regard this toast as the great 
pledge of fidelity to the constitution ; and from the 
manner in which it has been received, I am evi- 
dently entitled to conclude that such also is the feel- 
ing of this assembly, composed as it is of the chief 
property, character, and loyalty of London. 

Gentlemen — Your Chairman, in alluding to the 
hazards of the country, especially remarked on those 
which threaten the national religion. In this view 
I perfectly agree with him. Whatever the foreign 
perils of the country may be now, or in future, she 
can have none so perilous as those which assault her 
church. She has been engaged in many a severe 
struggle, and it has only increased her strength ; she 
has received many a malignant blow, and it has only 



SPEECH. 311 

proved the solidity of her armour ; but the single evil 
that she has ever to dread, is from within, the disease 
of the heart ; the drying up of that fount of her 
life-blood, the possession of the purest form of Chris- 
tianity. 

Deprecating as I do, and as every man who is not 
bewildered by national vanity must do, all conflicts 
with foreign nations ; the triumphs of England in 
the last and greatest of European wars prove that 
her solitary strength has nothing to fear from the 
world. I allude even to that war, only from its 
evidence of the inexhaustible strength administered 
by public principle. England, first opening her gates 
to the fugitive hopes and rights of Europe ; then 
issuing from them only to throw her shield over its 
fallen thrones ; and finally returning, after the most 
illustrious victories, satisfied with having broken the 
chains of nations, affords the noblest instance of mag- 
nanimity in the annals of Empire. I see alike in her 
proud security, her triumphant strength, and her self- 
denying benevolence, a monument raised to the 
glory of our age, which mankind will never suffer to 
perish. And I see on that monument, inscribed by 
a more than human hand, National Religion. 

There is no question clearer in its nature, than the 
connexion of Church and State. The Establishment 
has been called a ' Parliament Church,' and a f Law 
Church.' 1 shall not pause to object to the names. 
1 respect the Legislature and the Law, and I cannot 



312 SPEECH. 

discover humiliation in being protected by the one, 
or conformable to the other. But if those names are 
to imply, that the church is the creation of the state, 
or the slave of the state, or that it is unable to exist 
but by the state, we come to an issue at once. Those 
conclusions I fearlessly deny. The propositions 
which I hold, and which I challenge any man of 
common sense and common knowledge to dispute, 
are, that the Church is essential to the State — that the 
Church can exist without the monarchy, though the 
monarchy cannot exist without the Church, — and that 
whatever the monarchy may offer in protection, the 
Church more than repays in security. 

On this topic, I waive all theological discussion, as 
unsuited to the time and place ; and restrict myself 
to considering the subject merely in its public action. 
Who can doubt, that a Church may exist without the 
State, be the form of that State what it will. The 
Apostolical Church existed without a connexion with 
the State. The episcopal Church of Scotland exists 
without a connexion with the State. The American 
episcopal Church exists without a connexion with the 
State. The Church of England, inheriting its spirit, 
its doctrines, and its orders, from a source higher 
than human councils, would still exist, if the State 
were under the heel of revolution to-morrow. The 
unquestionable fact is, that the Church requires from 
the State little more than what every institution, and 
every individual requires from it, — the protection of 



SPEECH. 313 

its property ; and, in ample, and in incomparable 
return, supplies the State with that hourly nutriment 
of morals and religion, of private virtue and public 
principle, without which the Constitution could not 
survive an hour. 

On this high subject, I make no allusion to present 
times, or to things so shadowy and vanishing as the 
acts of existing party. On such questions, we must 
turn from the heated passions and narrow foresight of 
the moment, to that great and calm teacher, who re- 
bukes the follies of the living generation by wisdom 
gathered from the grave. I appeal to history. 

I take the two pre-eminent epochs of our constitu- 
tional annals, the two antagonist revolutions of 1661 
and 1688. I see them both producing liberty; but 
the one producing it after long travail, bringing it 
to light in convulsion, and stamping its physiognomy 
with the convulsion in which it was born : the other 
shaping it, like our first ancestor, in finished beauty, 
giving it dominion by an original charter, and esta- 
blishing it on an unstained and unrivalled throne. 

I have no desire to speak slightingly of that first 
Revolution. It was the first crisis that developed the 
true shape and muscular energy of the national charac- 
ter. It exhibited great enterprize, great perseverance, 
great conquest of difficulties. It was a natural stage 
in the progress of an imperial people to empire. 
Time and the monarchy had dissolved the chains by 
which the baron bowed the serf to the earth ; the 



314 SPEECH. 

chains of the monarchy itself remained, and the people 
were already too high-spirited, to be reconciled to 
their weight by their gilding. I fully admit, that the 
period was come for the cessation of arbitrary govern- 
ment. England was to have a throne raised on no- 
bler foundations than the broken spears and cloven 
helms of feudalism. Like the Roman Capitol, founded 
on the human head ; its permanency and its power 
were to be sustained by the glowing blood and 
immortal intellect of its people. 

But, it is the justice of their right which aggravates 
the injustice of their wrong. It is the splendour of 
their march to freedom, which throws a condemning 
light on the depth of their fall. It is the ease and 
rapidity of their ascent above the highest level, 
and almost above the highest view, of European 
liberty, which warns us most strikingly against 
evils, so powerful as to dash them from their height, 
and leave the nation, plumeless and crushed, upon 
the ground. 

I date the whole national calamity from the as- 
sault on the establishment. From the moment in 
which the redress of political grievances was turned 
into the plunder of the Church — from the moment 
when the first sacrilegious hand was laid upon the 
altar, the land was swept with a storm of retribution. 
Till then, all had gone on with scarcely an impedi- 
ment. Certainly, nothing had occurred in the shape 
of serious evil. The various limitations of the prero- 



SPEECH. $U 

gative had been unavenged. The various encroach- 
ments on the privileges of the aristocracy had pro- 
duced no menaces of public misfortune. There was 
a general feeling that some change was essential to 
the state : and the gentle nature of the King, though 
irritated at the first sound of those popular blasts 
which rushed so unexpectedly through the royal 
chambers, yet was beginning gradually to discover, 
that their roughness was compensated by the fresh 
vigour which they gave to the national frame. But, 
at that moment, the grasp was laid on the Establish- 
ment, and all was ruin. 

The Long Parliament, name of terrible memory, 
assembled. The assault on the Establishment began. 
" One of the earliest acts of the legislature was the 
appointment of a * Committee of Religion,' consisting 
of the whole house : this subsequently branched off 
into various sub-committees, one of which took the 
appellation of ' The Committee for providing Preach- 
ing Ministers, and removing Scandalous Ones.' 
(Nov. 6, 1640.) The practical effect of those com- 
mittees was, to intimidate the clergy."* This blow was 
followed by a rapid succession of injuries. The 
Lord Keeper was ordered to leave the clergy out of 
the commission of the peace. A motion was made 
to deprive the bishops of their seats in the Lords. 
Another was made to abolish bishops, deans, and 

* Short's History of the Church of England, p. 467. 



316 SPEECH. 

chapters. Finally, the bishops being obliged, by the 
clamour thus raised against them, to " fly from the 
House by stealth," they were eventually sent to the 
Tower on a charge of high treason, and there de- 
tained, until deprived of their votes ; as they, soon 
after, were of their property. We have no time now 
for detail. I can allude only to the consequences. 
If the tree is to be judged of by its fruits, nothing 
could be more criminal in the eyes of the Great 
Disposer of men and nations, than those insults to 
his Church. For nothing could have brought down 
more instantaneous suffering. 

The Parliament instantly lost even all appearance of 
a legislature. It became a vast faction. All the grace, 
wisdom, and dignity of national council were gone, 
and the nation saw in it only an undisguised and 
desperate conspiracy to overthrow all past power and 
engross all future. The conduct of the Commons was 
to be accounted for only by infatuation ; like that of 
the Jewish kings, to whom a false prophet had been 
sent. Sitting in the robes of legislators, they exhi- 
bited the practices of banditti ; their only conception 
of power, violence — their only conception of law, ra- 
pine — their only conception of government, a licen- 
tious impunity for plunder, passion, and revenge. 

By a frenzy, without example, they now proceeded 
to a general destruction of the State, without limit^ 
rule, or end. Blow after blow, they broke down, 
not merely those barriers, which might be obnoxious 



SPEECH. 317 

to the ambition of a party, but every buttress and 
defence essential to the being of society. Even the 
peril of this general dissolution of things to them- 
selves was wholly overlooked. They not merely car- 
ried the royal ship out to sea, without compass or 
ballast ; but, as the gale rose, they employed them- 
selves in cutting away her masts, and opening her 
planks, until all went down together. 

They first tore down the king's ministry. They 
threw the head of the government, Strafford, and 
the head of the church, Laud, into dungeons ; the 
Cabinet was instantly dissolved. Thus having stripped 
the country of a government, they proceeded to find 
its substitute in a tyranny. 

' A new jurisdiction,' says the historian, ? was 
erected in the nation ; and before their tribunal, all 
those trembled, who had before exulted in their credit 
and authority.' * 

Having crushed the government, they proceeded 
to crush all inferior authority. They now assailed 
the lords-lieutenants and deputy lieutenants of coun- 
ties by a new charge, ' delinquency ; ' a charge, 
of the true texture for the use of a tyrant, elastic 
enough to close on the humblest, and to extend to 
the greatest, — of all the instruments of power, the 
most formidable, an undefined crime. 

They next flung the ruins of the municipal govern- 

* Hume. Charles I. 



318 SPEECH. 

ment on the ruins of the administration ; and de- 
clared all the sheriffs, and all employed by them in 
levying the ship-money, delinquents ! 

( A very rigorous sentence/ observes the historian, 
for the sheriffs had been doing no more than their 
duty, to which they had been bound by their office, 
and under severe penalties.' 

They next seized on the officers of the customs, and 
adding plunder to tyranny, forced them to purchase 
their pardon by a payment of one hundred and fifty 
thousand pounds. 

They next resolved, ' that every man who had 
concurred in the sentences of the courts of high 
commission should be liable to the penalties of the 
law : ' a sweeping sentence which involved nearly 
every man connected with public life. 

' No minister of the king,' says the historian, ' no 
member of the council, but found himself exposed 
by this decision.' 

They had extinguished the law, they had now only 
to destroy its officers. They ordered the judges 
who had given their votes against Hampden, to be 
accused before the Peers. " All men saw with as- 
tonishment the irresistible authority of their jurisdic- 
tion." The fall of the throne was now in prospect, and 
the assault was recommenced on its natural defender, 
the Church. By a new ecclesiastical statute, the whole 
bench of Bishops, and the most considerable of 
the inferior clergy, found themselves exposed to the 



SPEECH. S 1 9 

imputation of ' delinquency.' ' Thus,' says the his- 
torian, in language of that solemn warning which 
ought never to pass from our memories, — ' the whole 
sovereign power being transferred to the Commons ; 
and the government being changed in a moment from 
a monarchy to a pure democracy, the popular leaders 
proceeded to consolidate their authority.' And what 
was that consolidation ? Regicide. By impeaching 
the Church they had torn away the shield ; by im- 
peaching the ministry, they had torn away the sword ; 
and the monarchy now stood naked. Charles saw 
the grave dug before his eyes ; he was spared only 
until he saw his councillors and friends flung in ; and 
then one fierce blow flung himself, where falsehood 
and faction — where hypocritical rapine and sancti- 
monious avarice — where licence under the name 
of liberty, and thirst of power under the name of 
patriotism, can trouble no more. In the language of 
the great dramatist : 

There he lay. 
His silver skin laced with his golden blood, 
His gashed stabs looking like a breach in nature 
For ruin's watchful entrance. 

Who could refrain ? 
That had a heart to love, and in that heart 
Courage to make his love known ! 

It is to the honour of England, that all were not 
equally guilty ; that there were gallant men who 
struggled in council and in the field, to avert the na- 
tional crime. But, with the expulsion of the Bishops 



320 SPEECH. 

from Parliament, the death-blow of the monarchy 
had been given. From that hour faction had the 
game in its own hands, and it was played with fierce 
and contemptuous superiority. The civil war was 
only a gloomier episode in this history of treason ; a 
drainage of the national blood, that threw the nation 
at the feet of its oppressors : The two years' struggle 
was only a prouder pageant of royalty to an un- 
timely tomb. 

I now ask, who were the authors of this dreadful 
catastrophe ? I ask, whether any revolution ever took 
place in any country, in which rabble ignorance, or 
rabble violence, had a less share ? I ask, whether it 
was not of all revolutions, the most aristocratic ? 
Whether, if the multitude poured in to share the 
plunder, was it not the nobles and the gentry who 
stormed the battlements ? 

I touch on those topics with reluctance. I ac- 
knowledge the respect due even to the errors of a 
great people. It would be more satisfactory to my 
feelings, with filial awe and averted face, to throw 
the mantle over the nakedness of our common parent, 
than to expose it, overcome by its new and dangerous 
intoxication. But the lesson is one of the most 
solemn portions of our national experience ; it 
shews us man, and how little we can depend upon 
man. 

But are we to be told, that those deeds can never 
be re-acted in England : that we are too enlightened, 



SPEECH. 321 

too moral, too experienced, in the nineteenth century 
for the extravagances of the seventeenth. 

The Long Parliament exhibited among its members 
the first gentlemen of England, some of the most 
learned in the laws, many of the noblest descent, 
and still more of the most heroic hearts. Were they, 
like the leaders of the French Revolution, infi- 
dels and atheists ? They were religious, some of 
them even enthusiasts in religion. Were they in- 
dividuals of feeble capacity, and narrow political 
experience, the natural dupes of political delusion ? 
Perhaps no assembly that England, or Europe, ever 
saw, contained so many accomplished and powerful 
minds. * Then was the time,' says Hume, 'when genius 
and capacity of all kinds, began to exert themselves, 
and to be distinguished by the public. ' Every kind 
of temper animating every kind of talent ; every man 
seeing those objects placed before him which best 
suited his faculties, and straining after them with 
an effort which gave new vigour to those faculties ; 
the sagacity of Pym, the ardour of St. John, the 
daring impetuosity of Hollis, the chivalric valour of 
Hampden, the brilliant excentricity of Yane, and 
the profound subtlety, yet magnificent ambition of 
the future master of them all — Cromwell. 

If all revolutions develope unexpected ability ; if 
the increased glow of the political horizon kindles 
the soil beneath, and shows its hidden metals starting 
to the surface in streams of fire ; still, we look in 



322 SPEECH. 

vain among the leaders of continental change, for the 
character of the English republican. We can no 
more compare their levity, vice, and selfishness, with 
the solemn and lofty sincerity of the man of the 
commonwealth, than a firework with a fixed star. 

But what was the conduct of the clergy in 
those terrible times ? They unhesitatingly took the 
side of the king, while that side was most unpopular, 
disastrous, and even dangerous, They followed the 
royal steps to the field, the prison, and the grave. 
Who now doubts that their fidelity was virtue ; that 
their simplicity was true knowledge of the principles 
of freedom ; that their faith led them to discover the 
only path to national prosperity ? 

In the spirit of that unhesitating loyalty, in which 
the old Englishman left his dying command to his 
sons, to % stick to the crown, though they found it 
hanging on a bush ; ' the clergy no sooner saw the 
throne in danger, than, forgetting its early neglects, 
they gathered to its support, adhered, to it with a 
sacred constancy, and perished by its side. Laud laid 
down his head on the same scaffold with Charles, 

We are now in a situation to form a judgment ; 
\ye look from the height of two centuries ; we 
stand at a distance of time sufficient to clear away 
the vapours which rise from the heated soil of fac- 
tion. All men now acknowledge, that the support of 
monarchy was as much the support of the constitu- 
tion in 1641, as it is in 1840. This is our loyalty ; 



SPEECH. 383 

principled, unvarying, hereditary, and only strength- 
ened by transmission and time. 

Such is the practical answer of the church to its 
calumniators; it does not rest its cause on living 
testimony alone, it appeals to those who are now 
beyond the follies or the fictions of the world. It 
summons its evidence from the tribunal by which 
all living character must be tried in its turn ; it calls 
the confessor and the martyr, the statesman and the 
soldier ; the men whose monuments, like those of the 
prophets of Israel, we build only in condemnation of 
ourselves, if we are not made wiser by their pre- 
cepts and their example. Its allegiance is not the 
flattery of to-day, to be turned into the libel of to- 
morrow ; not a party impulse, but a conscientious 
conviction — not the flag of a flying camp, to be raised 
or lowered from hour to hour ; but the standard of 
England, raised on the tower of the constitution, and 
never to be taken down, until all is ruined together. 

England, then, had her lesson ; but, under what a 
penalty ! The fall of the church was avenged by evils 
as direct, as immediate, and as irresistible as ever 
smote a nation. The punishment was judicial ; the 
crime instantly wrought its own punishment. Over- 
throwing the great instrument of rational religion, 
the people exposed themselves to the invasion of 
religious frenzy. The space from which the Church 
had been swept, was suddenly filled with the 
wildest multitude of fanaticism. Even what remained 
y 2 



S24 SPEECH. 

of the Establishment was converted into the means 
of new mischiefs to the country ; the pulpits were 
seized by low ignorance, the livings were engrossed 
by low rapacity ; the parishes were ready-made 
localities for safe hypocrisy and easy extortion. Like 
the ruins of some great city, the broken vaults and 
dismantled chambers of the Establishment became 
the haunt of the mendicant and the madman, the 
refuge of the outlaw, and the den of the robber. 
Sects of every monstrous form and squalid folly 
covered the land, embittered the life of the people, 
and perplexed public council ; until, in their rivalry 
for power, abandoning even the pretext of liberty, 
they carried a tyrant on their shoulders, through 
public carnage ; and finished by bowing themselves 
and their country to an usurped throne. 

I demand, are we disposed to go through the same 
round of revolution again ? Or, on what grounds are 
we authorised to conclude, that such things may not 
occur again ? Where is the impossibility ? Are we 
of another nature than our fathers ? Are we more 
fortified against political change, than the bold, firm, 
and religious race of the primitive gentry of England ? 
Have later times taught us a loftier defiance of poli- 
tical corruption, a graver political prudence,- a more 
indignant scorn of lucre, a more willing homage for 
law, or a more reverent sense of religion ? 

Where is even the improbability. Relying largely 
as I do, on the sober and manly portion of the 



SPEECH. 325 

English mind ; I cannot disguise from myself the 
strong similitude which our times bear to the politi- 
cal physiognomy of the seventeenth century. I can- 
not shut my eyes to those vast assemblages of the 
armed populace, who inscribe their banners with 
" Downfall to the Constitution," I cannot be deaf to 
the loud and taunting proclamations by organized 
sects, of their utter hostility to the whole frame of 
society as based upon religion. 

Those sights and sounds may subside, but it is only 
for a season ; and it would be madness to think that 
they will be extinguished by our indolent disdain. I 
do not say, that the actors are yet full dressed for their 
parts, or that the curtain is yet ready to be raised. 
But this I say ; that the stage is there, that the actors 
are there too : and that if any one man of great 
popular ability and great popular favouritism, were to 
start forward on the boards ; we might find the cur- 
tain springing up at once, and the whole wild and 
sanguinary illusion of the political tragedy moving 
before us in all its passions and in all its terrors. 

I acknowledge my astonishment, that no such man 
has yet appeared ; that we have hitherto seen no pro- 
duce of democracy, but its virulence and its dulness ; 
that among all the myriads who have been of late 
years led or driven into the strife of politics, not one 
has exhibited any commanding capacity. I confess 
myself amazed, that their whole Conscription, un- 
sparing as it has been, has not furnished them with 



S26 SPEECH. 

single conspicuous champion. This is even so con- 
trary to the course of nature, that I should be almost 
inclined to refer it to the protection of providence. 
For never was there a time when a profligate man of 
genius might commit more wide-wasting evil against 
the constitution. With the chartist and the socialist 
waiting for the signal, what would be the effect of a 
radical Bolingbroke ? With the feverish millions of 
popery, what would be the effect of a popish Charles 
Fox ? It is fortunate for England and for Europe, 
that nothing of that rank has appeared. We have 
abundant imitations of the Clodius ; none of the 
Catiline, or the Cromwell. 

But we must not ' lay the flattering unction to our 
souls,' that such will never come. The great incen- 
diary may be among the multitude at this moment, 
unconscious of his destination, until the torch is put 
into his hand. Who saw Robespierre in the village 
attorney ? Who saw Napoleon in the subaltern of 
artillery ? Nature makes talents, but circumstance 
makes character. Where the materials of conspi- 
racy are suffered to lie strewn around, a spark 
from the heel of the peasant will awake the explo- 
sion. Nothing would surprise me less, than to see 
starting from the radical ranks, some man of such 
intellectual power, that all gave way before him ; 
some new senatorial mind, some splendid malignity, 
some lofty and desperate leader of council; compelling 
into one mass all the rude, dark, angry elements of 
tumult, and hurrying them against the constitution. 



SPEECH. 827 

Our times might create such men. " Where the 
carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." 

I do not predict that this convulsion must come. On 
the contrary ; it is my earnest hope, that the country 
will sustain the church, and thus provide for itself 
the most unassailable security. But, if the church 
should be enfeebled ; still more, despoiled ; I see no 
limit to the extent, and no end to the existence of the 
convulsion. We may retain the outward form of 
society, but the heart will be torn out, and the blood 
will circulate no more. We have once seen the mon- 
archy in its shroud, are we impatient to try the 
experiment of its dissolution in the grave ? 

But, if I am to be told, that we are alarmed with- 
out cause, that there is no intention of molesting the 
church ; that the danger of the Establishment is only 
the cry of pusillanimity, or party. How am I to 
reconcile this with the knowledge, that its spoil has 
more than once in our day been made a notorious 
stipulation ; that hatred to it is the badge of thou- 
sands and tens of thousands, worthy of the darkness 
in which they assemble : nay, that its utter ruin is the 
bond, which has power to bring together and keep 
together factions disdaining and hating each other ; 
traitors, whose principles on all other points are wide 
as the poles asunder ; that this one enmity is strong 
enough to neutralize the mutual malice, combine the 
instinctive repulsions, and march under one confede- 
rate banner the fanatic, the infidel, and the slave of 
superstition. 



328 SPEECH. 

I insist on the argument— that the Established 
Church was a sacred gift to England ; that in its 
possession she had the noblest means ever offered for 
the civilization of a people, for the safety of an 
empire, and the purity of a religion : that she was 
accountable for its use, and punishable for its injury ; 
and that the act of breaking down the church was 
then, and would be now, avenged, as an insult to the 
bounty of heaven. 

I insist on the fact, — that the whole course of na- 
tional evil flowed from the first demonstration of hos- 
tility to the church. This was the cloud which, 
covered the rising sun of British freedom, and shook 
from its skirts the thunder and the hail. The process 
is clear, and it is consecutive ; — the first insult to the 
church overthrew the government ; — the next over- 
threw the monarchy — the last overthrew the realm. 

It is notorious, that the bishops had scarcely been 
driven from Parliament, when, as if a sudden host 
of tormentors had burst up from the bosom of the 
abyss, war raged in every shape of ruin. First blazed 
the great Irish rebellion ; one of the most sudden 
and sweeping explosions in the annals of conspiracy ; 
a shock by which England saw her whole power in 
the sister country lifted up from its foundations, and 
shattered into a thousand fragments. 

While her ears were yet full of the cries of Ire- 
land, she heard the roar of civil flame round herself; 
without the warning of a moment, she saw the confla- 



SPEECH. 329 

gration advancing on every side, and found all her in- 
stitutions enveloped in the blaze. Even when the 
havoc died through exhaustion, she saw it roused 
again by a blast from the north ; a Scottish inva- 
sion came, to swell the sufferings of the land. 

But, was liberty gained after all? Was the blood 
of the nation accepted as the purchase of a purer 
constitution ? Was she enabled, by wading through 
that tide of human wretchedness, to bring up from 
among the wrecks of her throne, and the corpses of the 
noblest of her sons, a newer charter ? Totally the re- 
verse. Five pitched battles, the siege of her chief cities, 
numberless conflicts, the desperate waste of gallant 
life, produced nothing, produced worse than nothing. 
Liberty perished on the field; and before the smoke of 
battle had subsided, a tremendous shape had risen in 
the darkness, and usurped its place. England sud- 
denly found herself in the grasp of Despotism. A 
mad rebellion had been retaliated by an iron tyranny. 
To its astonishment, and to its shame, the nation 
saw the throne of a mild monarch filled by a reckless 
conspirator ; its visions of a fantastic freedom scat- 
tered by awaking in the dungeon ; the altar, to which 
it had summoned a dazzling creature of imagination, 
tenanted by the frowning and contemptuous reality 
of irresponsible power. 

And yet, such was the national disgust for the 
insults, the spoil, and the oppressions of the demo- 
cracy, that the people felt relieved by the despotism. 



380 SPEECH. 

Like men tossed on the ocean, they rejoiced in reach- 
ing the most barren spot that could give rest to the 
sole of their feet ; they embraced the sterile security 
of the protectorate. Disgusted with the vanities of 
their old idols, they left the Commons to their fate, 
and took refuge in the colossal shadow of Cromwell. 

And who shall blame them for the choice ? T say, 
infinitely better one tyrant than ten thousand ; better 
the stern justice of one proud and powerful mind, 
than the mean arrogance and capricious mercies 
of a cabal : better to trust in the sense of personal 
dignity, than the avarice of rabble possession ; 
better to lie down at once in the lion's den, where 
the noble brute, at least, when he is satiated, will 
spare; than be flung into a nest of snakes and scor- 
pions, whose very nature it is to torment, and sting, 
and kill. 

But I call you to contemplate a more cheering topic ; 
the contrast, in the revolution of 1688 ; the glorious 
revolution, and well deserving of the name. If 
history ever furnished a noble national example, ex- 
pressly to substantiate a noble political theory, 
she furnished it there. The contrast is total, and 
the conclusion irresistible. In the time of Charles 
the First, the people were the aggressors ; and the 
prerogative was assailed through the church. In 
the time of James the Second, the monarch was 
the aggressor ; and the church was assailed through 
the prerogative. The church had once stood second 



SPEECH, 331 

in danger, it now stood first. And be it remem- 
bered, by those who are in the habit of charging 
it with a slavish dependence, that it stood alone ! 
The Commons, once so bold, had long sunk into 
such servility of panic, that when one manly member* 
attempted to rouse them, by saying ' He hoped 
Englishmen were not to be frightened by a few hard 
words,' they washed their hands of this formidable 
criminality, by actually committing him to the Tower. 
The peerage were equally overawed. When the 
King's speech was read, proclaiming the * Dispensing 
power/ in other words, the demand of an authority 
above all law ; all were thunderstruck, not a voice was 
uttered ; until one man rose, and that man was Comp- 
ton, Bishop of London. The constitution was already 
in the grave. It was the church alone, which in the 
strength of a mightier impulse, stood by that grave, 
and bade the dead arise. It was that church too, 
which in a further emergency of this great time, com- 
pleted the work, released it from the bonds and 
cearments still fettering its limbs, and bade it go 
forth to the world, a pledge of the power that wrought 
the miracle. 

The controversy of the time was not, as in 1641, a 
mingled question of political and ecclesiastical in- 
terests. It was supremely a question of the 
church ; for James had already extinguished the 

* Coke of Derb}'. 



332 SPEECH. 

parliament. And the results were as strongly con- 
trasted as the cause. Instead of the long and san- 
guinary struggle of the Commonwealth, the church 
now conquered without a blow, and the nation tri- 
umphed without a convulsion. The whole was less like 
the broken and insecure efforts of man than the influ- 
ence of some of those vast physical agencies, which, 
above human means, and beyond human control, bring 
the seasons in their change ; or some of those magnifi- 
cent ministers of providence who harmoniously guide 
the sphere of mortal fates, and, invisible to mortal 
eyes, * ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.' 
Without injuring the slightest interest of individuals, 
it changed the whole spirit of the monarchy; without 
enfeebling the throne, it gave a new strength to the 
nation ; without disturbing the surface of society, it 
poured light and heat into the depths ; and consti- 
tuted, for a hundred years, the source of that regulated 
freedom, which has itself constituted the source of our 
whole national prosperity to this hour. We have the 
decided testimony of Mackintosh, and all the leading 
writers on our Legislation, that no country of ancient 
or modern annals ever enjoyed a hundred years of 
prosperity and progress, so rapid, and so unbroken, 
as England, from the accession of William the 
Third. And that progress is still but slightly in- 
termitted. Without ambition, England has achieved 
universal influence ; without war, she has gained 
unbounded territory ; her commerce is the life of 



SPEECH. 333 

all nations; her liberty their hope; her language is 
extending through the borders of the world ; her 
sceptre touches the antipodes. Continents have been 
given to her redundant population. Christianity has 
been confided to her imperial mission. Her gigantic 
embrace, without an effort, goes round the globe. 

But we must not now forget the courage of the 
church, in the completeness of its original triumph. 
It was a service of imminent danger. The power of 
the throne at the crisis was immense. Besides the in- 
fluence which at all times surrounds the diadem, James 
had the whole body of that faith which he had es- 
poused, ready for action in both kingdoms ; an army 
encamped within an hour's march of the metropo- 
lis, and a powerful force in Ireland ; the whole 
Romish influence of Europe zealous in his cause ; 
and the French king, its leading monarch, ready to 
assist him with fleets and armies. With this vast 
weight of physical force, he had also the moral force 
that waits upon success. He had just put down the 
insurrections of Monmouth and Argyle. The pea- 
santry were terrified by the slaughters of the West 
and North ; the nobility and chiefs of parties were 
warned by the streaming scaffolds of Russell and 
Sydney. With Jefferies for a judge, and Kirk for an 
executioner, all seemed ready to fall the prey of a 
vigilant, vindictive, and bigoted despotism. 

Yet, it was in the face of this peril that the Church 
stood for the truth, and the truth alone. Her cause 



334 SPEECH. 

was unalloyed with avarice, or ambition. She entered 
the field for rights above the world ; and, I solemn- 
ly believe, she was aided from sources above the 
world. Her standard was f Conscience,' and " in that 
sign she conquered.' Never was there a conquest 
more instant, more complete, or more unlike the 
ordinary operation of human victory. With two 
great contending faiths in the land, religious feud 
sank at once ; with two rival kings at the head of 
armies, not a life was sacrificed ; with two haughty 
creeds, ■ Right Divine' and ' Republicanism,' ready 
for conflict, she modelled them both into a limited 
monarchy ! The tyrant's strength dissolved before her 
step ; armies melted away, councils broke up, parti- 
zans shrank ; until the royal bigot, abandoned by all, 
set the seal to his own ignominy, and the perpetual 
exclusion of his race, by flying from the throne. 

I have done : though the subject is still full of the 
most important recollections. But the principle is 
beyond all controversy. It is this — that on the safety 
of the Church of England depends the safety of the 
State of England. We have the unanswerable testi- 
mony of two revolutions, each exercising the deepest 
influence on its time ; the two grand modellers of 
their ages. In the revolution of 1641, the Church 
assailed by the ruling power, and abandoned by the 
people, sank ; and the monarchy, the constitution, 
and the country, instantly sank along with it. In 
the revolution of 1688, the Church, assailed by the 



SPEECH. HS5 

ruling power, but adhered to by the people, stood; and 
standing, saved the monarchy, retrieved the constitu- 
tion, and raised the country to a rank unknown before. 
She conquered withouta blow. In the former instance, 
liberty was lost ; buried in a sea of civil blood. In the 
latter, liberty was won, without the loss of a single 
drop of gore. In the former, the recovery of the coun- 
try was slow, and her liberty required half a century, 
to set it upon its feet. In the latter, the reco- 
very of the country was instant, and her liberty shot 
upwards on the wing. 

The Church was victorious. But her victory was 
wasted in no insolent indulgence of fortune. The 
fanaticism of the Commonwealth had largely dis- 
gusted the nation. Detected hypocrisy had made the 
multitude careless, and the higher orders contemp- 
tuous, of religion. England had become the head 
quarters of infidelity. The church now applied herself 
to heal this most fatal of all national diseases. The 
labour cost her half a century, but it succeeded ; and 
England became the fount of religious truth to 
Europe. Could this noblest of all successes have 
been achieved by any fluctuating, dependent, and un- 
learned sectarianism ? or could it have been done by 
less than the system, the independence, the learning, 
and the public stability, of a national church ? It is 
also memorable, and the fact is in the highest degree 
instructive ; that this new triumph of the Church was 
signalized by the most unexampled triumph of the 



336 SPEECH. 

State. Europe saw, at the precise period which left in- 
fidelity at its dying gasp, a sudden splendour burst 
round the arms of England ; the triumphs of Chatham 
in the middle of the last century, astonished the world. 
And that splendour grew. From that hour British 
dominion received a new impulse. India, Canada, 
and Australia were given into its hand. England 
might still have her human difficulties ; she lost the 
United States ; but, for the precarious sway of a rest- 
less colony, she was proudly compensated by the 
tranquil diadems of three empires. 

The church took the lead then ; and she held it on, 
and she holds it still. The last great struggle of 
Europe, the French Revolution, was essentially a 
struggle of principle. It was Infidelity in arms 
against Religion. In that tremendous conflict, when 
every form of worship on the continent fell in suc- 
cession before the sword, and the enemy might 
almost have cried out, in the words of the Assyrian 
of old, " Have any of the gods of the nations deli- 
vered out of our hand? Where are the gods of 
Hamath, and of Arphad ? Where are the gods of 
Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah ?" * — the Church of 
England was the strength of the people. Like ano- 
ther Hezekiah laying the letter of the heathen on the 
altar ; her king was seen going at the head of his 
nobles to the temple, bowing down before the 

* 2 Kings xviii. 



SPEECH. 337 

Supreme Disposer of kingdoms, and returning with 
the promise of an illustrious security. 

And what has been her conduct since, — has she 
retrograded, — has her object been either the accumu- 
lation of wealth, or the accumulation of power ? It 
has been, to purify her discipline, to multiply her 
benevolence, to extend education, and give additional 
places of worship to her people — to reform the ex- 
cesses of the rich, to preach the gospel to the poor, 
and to be in charity with all. She has prospered, 
and she is prospering more than ever, at this moment. 
In her three-hundredth year she exhibits more than 
the ardour of her youth ; she is sending her missions 
through the world, she is building her bishoprics in 
the remotest regions : — Spreading the gospel with the 
speed and splendour of an angel's wing, the Church 
of England is expanding into the Church of man- 
kind. 



XIII. 



NAPOLEON. 

Written in 1841. 
The body of Napoleon, brought from St. Helena by 
the permission of the British Government, was car- 
ried in a triumphal procession with great pomp 
through Paris, and deposited in the Church of the 
Invalides. (December 15, 1840.) 

The honours which France has paid to the remains 
of Napoleon, after the lapse of a quarter of a century 
from his fall } naturally revive the memory of that 
most singular and most dazzling character in Euro- 
pean annals. He must be regarded as the most ex- 
traordinary being who has appeared in government 
since the Roman empire ; if we are to estimate in- 
dividual eminence by splendid ability and superb 
fortune. 

The French Revolution was a perpetual demand, 
and a perpetual trial, of all the prouder and more 
perilous qualities of the human mind. It was a tri- 
umphal chariot, which all men were alike invited to 



NAPOLEON. 33$ 

ascend ; but, whirled along by steeds of such fierce- 
ness, that all who grasped the reins were dashed 
successively to the ground. Napoleon was the 
single exception. He reined them to the goal. 

Almost from the moment of his appearing, he took, 
and he preserved, the first rank. He stands, the first 
man of Republican France, when all the old impedi- 
ments to personal display had been equally levelled 
before every man : the first soldier of his time, in the 
midst of an universal struggle for military glory : the 
most magnificent, lofty, and despotic of sovereigns, 
in an age of kings ; and the sole founder of a throne 
in Europe ; that throne itself raised on the ruins of 
a Republic ; and that Republic covering the ruins of 
a Monarcrry. 

Napoleon is not to find his rival in sovereigns sub- 
duing^ only the savage clanships of early Europe, or 
coming calmly to the possession of hereditary thrones. 
Among all the great wielders of the sword, the 
Charlemagnes, Frederics, and Catherines, he is su- 
preme : he moves in an element above them all. The 
beneficent and generous conquerors are of a higher 
class than either. The deliverers of their country, 
the assertors of the rights of nations, those illustrious 
minds which, necessarily mingling in the tumults of 
European conflict, yet fought and conquered only 
for the protection of mankind — the Maurice, the 
Gustavus Adolphus, the William the Third — belong 
to another class of historic existence. They more 
z 2 



340 NAPOLEON. 

resemble, in their purposes and their power, those 
guardian spirits of nations which, unstained them- 
selves, perform the stern but saving commands of 
Providence in our troubled world ; possessed of vast 
means, gifted with great faculties, but wholly exert- 
ing them at the summons of duty. The others are 
like the creations of mythology — the Homeric deities, 
beings of mighty strength and splendour, but in- 
flamed by human passions and corrupted by human 
crimes, prone to mingle in the conflicts of men, to 
stoop from their golden heights for the feeble prizes 
of mortal ambition, and waste their thunders on the 
mortal field. 

In his life, the matters important to posterity will be 
the circumstances of his time, and the extraordinary 
influence by which, after being carried along the cur- 
rent of events for a period, he suddenly became master 
of its course, and thenceforth ruled it according to his 
will. Napoleon, born in 1769, and, educated for 
the military service, had distinguished himself so 
highly at the seige of Toulon in 1793, when he was 
but twenty-four, as to obtain the notice of the army 
and the government. His next scene was Paris. 
The attack of the armed populace on the Directory 
compelled the trembling faction in power to shelter 
themselves behind the soldiery. Napoleon was pointed 
out by Barras. While the Directory were in instant 
expectation of being dragged to the scaffold, still 
wet with the blood of that embodying of Jacobinism, 



NAPOLEON. 341 

Robespierre ; Barras put the young Corsican at the 
head of their troops, with the brief, but expressive 
character — * Here is an officer who is ready for any- 
thing/ That officer realized the promise ; swept 
the armed Sections before his guns ; and the child of 
the Revolution, like the Roman parricide, made his 
first step to the throne, by treading on the body of his 
parent. 

But it is from 1796 that we must date his career 
as a soldier. French Liberty had commenced by 
cheating all mankind. It was swindling, on the 
largest scale ever practised on the credulity of man. 
With the loftiest maxims of human welfare continu- 
ally on its lips, all its subtlety, — and it was boundless, 
— was employed in the darkest means of disturbing 
the reason, and envenoming the miseries of nations. 
Nothing could be more successful than its evocation of 
the fiend. Nothing could be more pompous in its 
structure, or richer in its decorations, than the altar 
which it erected to universal benevolence ; but the 
incense on the altar was poison, and the flame was 
kindled to blind, not to illumine. No jugglery of 
heathenism was ever more false or foul than the 
priestcraft of the solemn hierarchs, who ministered 
in the white robes of philosophy at the shrine of 
French freedom. In our day, the respect which 
honourable minds desire to retain for human nature, 
even in its lowest state, can scarcely suffer us to 
conceive the utter falsehood, the atrocious malignity, 



342 NAPOLEON. 

the simple, unalloyed wickedness which constituted 
the spirit of the Revolution. But its especial charac- 
ter was blood. Like its prototype, " it was a mur- 
derer from the beginning." Even in its first hours, it 
showed a thirst for slaughter, which stamped its 
nature. The acclamations of Europe, which, struck 
with its sudden vigour, its lofty protestations, and 
the bold rapidity of its stride over the wrecks of 
feudalism, had followed its early progress, soon died 
away ; men could not wade after it so deep in gore. 
Still it rushed on, flinging aside at every step some 
portion of that Jesuitical mask which it first wore : 
hourly rending away with a more contemptuous hand 
some fragment of those ties which allied it to the 
common family of nations ; until, at length, it 
scaled the steps of the throne, tore down its un- 
fortunate possessor, and with the guillotine for its 
footstool, and the populace for its ministers, seated 
itself in full supremacy of ruin. 

From this period it assumed a new form. It had 
hitherto been a civil evil — the assassin and incendiary 
of France — a frenzied liberty preying on the nation. 
It was thenceforth to become an European tormentor ; 
a tyranny threatening or trampling on all ? govern- 
ments ; an iron domination, either crushing the 
people of Europe into abject slavery, or dragging 
them in chains to the field, to make slaves of others. 
All had hitherto been delusion, the promise of uni- 
versal peace and prosperity. Satan had worn the 



NAPOLEON. 343 

garb of an angel of light. The deception had now 
done its work, and the angel was the evil spirit again 
in his supremacy, " a giant armed." 

The limited Monarchy had first taken the shape of 
the Republic— the Republic had assumed the dark- 
ening features of the Democracy. The Democracy, 
possessed of absolute power at home, now looked 
for proselytism, to be repaid by plunder, abroad. 

Then arose the Propaganda. — France declared war 
against the world : found in her contagion a new 
and cheaper element of war ; and dispatched her 
lepers to spread their mortality. Revolutionary 
doctrines made straight the way for revolutionary 
conquests ; and when she poured forth her' armies at 
once over Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, 
like streams of miasmata shooting from one centre ; 
she found sovereigns and subjects equally enfeebled ; 
Europe already at her feet ; its whole public strength 
prostrate ; the whole frame of society sicklied and 
subdued ; before a hand was raised to push it into 
the grave. She sacked the Lazarhouse ! 

Napoleon's conquest of Italy was the most brilliant 
in the history of the Republic. The conqueror rose 
instantly into fame. He threw a light upon the na- 
tion, which reflected the lustre back upon himself, 
and made him the most conspicuous soldier of his 
country. Another change was to exhibit him the 
most uncontrolled and uncontrollable sovereign. 

Pride is the grand temptation of all the higher 



344 NAPOLEON. 

order of human minds. The passion to seize power 
is the passion of Republics ; to retain it, of Des- 
potisms. Napoleon, the conqueror of Italy, had 
already reached the summit of military renown. 
But this elevation had only showed him that there 
was a still loftier height to be attained. The diadem 
glittered in his eye ; yet the republic lay, a great 
chasm, between. To give time for filling it up, 
he projected a design which exhibited at once the 
ambition, the daring, and the recklessness, of his 
genius. * The expedition to Egypt,' said he, long 
afterwards, * was meant for the conquest of Syria, 
Asia Minor, and Turkey in Europe. I would then 
have marched to France/ He would have thrown 
the wreck of the east on the west, and on both have 
piled up his throne. Of all the dreams of human 
ambition, this was the most boundless ; and if it is 
ever to be achieved by man, it will be by the combined 
sagacity and daring, the inexhaustible perseverance, 
and burning ambition, of a spirit resembling Napo- 
leon, in all but his fall. Throughout his whole ca- 
reer, from that hour, he retained the idea of ranging 
man into two great divisions. ' The east,' said he^ 
in his memorable conversation with Fox, ' is one 
great family ! the west is another. Whoever sets the 
nations of either at war, breeds dissension in a family* 
All should be at peace with each other.' — All in the 
slavery which he called peace, that all might submit 
to the tyranny which he called empire. With Na- 



NAPOLEON. 345 

poleon, alone of all sovereigns, perpetual conquest 
was a principle. He declared, that war was essential 
to the government of France ; and, for the first time 
among nations, openly proclaimed the maxim ; not 
yet forgotten in the restless mind of his country ; 
that power is the essential object of all policy ; and 
territorial aggrandizement a justifiable cause of war. 
Yet all was for himself. At the head of a world of 
slaves, France was only to be the first slave. 

Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven, had been 
made Commander-in-Chief of the army of Italy. 
Even then he had a prophetic sense of his triumphs. 
' In twelve months,' said he, ' I shall be either dead, 
or an old General.' Within those twelve months he 
fought the battles of Lodi, Castiglione, and Areola, 
and was the first General of Europe. He followed 
glory to Asia. 

His absence in Asia only increased his power 
in France. It gave him the romantic interest of 
the Crusader ; until he was recalled to be the Sove- 
reign. While he was fighting on the sands of Pales- 
tine, the Russian had come, and Italy was conquered. 
Suwarrow's tactics were a terrible novelty. He com- 
bined the wild rush of the Tartar hordes with the 
steady strength of European armies. For this the 
French troops were unprepared. They found them- 
selves outmarched when they attempted to manoeuvre, 
and crushed when they ventured to stand. The de- 
scriptions of Suwarrow's battles are the description 



346 NAPOLEON. 

of massacres, — the attack incessant, the execution ter- 
rible, and the spirit of the opposing force utterly ex- 
tinguished in the field. The battles in central Italy 
were days of ceaseless slaughter. The single battle 
of Novi utterly destroyed the army of Joubert ; the 
rest of the campaign against Moreau and Macdonald 
was a continued pursuit, with the sword perpetually 
mowing down the flying battalions of France, until 
they were driven over the Alps, and Italy was cleared 
of every footstep of her invaders — nothing remaining 
of them but the bones which whitened her mountains, 
her morasses, the ramparts of her cities, and the banks 
of her rivers. 

The Italian campaigns of Napoleon were the most 
refined application of military science ; those of Suwar- 
row the fiery force of irresistible courage. Napoleon, 
by the dexterity of his tactics, the variety of his ma- 
noeuvres, the incessant activity of his movements, and 
the intuitive skill with which he discovered the weak 
points of his enemy, exhibited the most dazzling ex- 
amples of European war. But Suwarrow's Italian bat- 
tles were of a character altogether distinct, and alto- 
gether superior. They were less scientific than start- 
ling : assaults daring, desperate, and furious ; rather 
bursts of vengeance than displays of soldiership ; less 
a gallant struggle against a gallant enemy, than an 
overwhelming and rapid retribution on a crowd of 
armed criminals, whose time was come. The conquest, 
on which Napoleon, with all his genius, was forced 



NAPOLEON. 347 

to consume two years, was achieved by the great 
Russian in a month. If Napoleon afterwards re- 
conquered it in a day, at Marengo, that day was lost 
by Austrian confidence, as the country was abandoned 
by Austrian timidity ; a mock negotiation accom- 
plished what could not have been effected by the sword. 
But the first Italian campaign of Suwarrow still re- 
mains unrivalled — an evidence of the power which 
may be inspired into a slow and formal national 
force by a single original and daring mind. Russia, 
neither before nor since, has produced such a leader 
of men, and may never produce another Suwarrow. 

In 1799, the terrors of France and the temptations 
of sovereignty alike recalled Napoleon from Egypt. 
On the 19th of November, he entered the hall where 
the Council of Ancients were assembled at St. Cloud ; 
and, after having fiercely defended himself from the 
charge of intending to overthrow the republic, re- 
tired to perform the same farce in the council of 
Five Hundred. But there he was received with 
uproar, as " a second Csesar, come to act the dicta- 
tor." Some furious members of the assembly sprang 
from their seats, rushed upon him, and the dagger 
was at his throat ; when General Le Febvre tore him 
away, and carried him out of the hall. Napoleon, 
thus repelled, sent in a platoon of grenadiers with 
bayonets fixed, to settle the controversy. The Pre- 
sident, Lucien, whom a moment of indecision would 
have sent, along with him, to the scaffold ; encouraged 



348 NAPOLEON. 

by the sight of the troops, now rose, pronounced that 
the members who had attempted to seize his brother 
were "traitors, purchased by the gold of Pitt;" 
the platoon of grenadiers silenced all reply, and 
Lucien proposed a decree on the spot, — " That Gene- 
ral Bonaparte, and all who had assisted him, deserved 
well of their country — that the Directory was at an 
end — and that the executive power should be placed 
in the hands of three provisional consuls, Bonaparte, 
Sieyes, and Roger Ducos." Thus had Cromwell fin- 
ished the democracy of England a century and a half 
before. Napoleon soon after appointed himself First 
Consul ; in the first instance for ten years ; then for 
life; then Emperor — " Thane, Cawdor, Glamis, 
thou hast it all :" the Macbeth of a mightier stage ! 

Another change was to exhibit Napoleon in a new 
rank, and Europe in new trials. From the field of 
Marengo the First Consul took up his diadem ; and 
its lustre was ominous to thrones. The European 
governments were vast, but decrepit, accumulations 
of power. They had many a hoary crime to answer 
for. The partition of Poland, an act of enormous 
guilt, had filled the cup of wrath ; and the fierce hand 
of France was commissioned to hold it to their lips. 
The world has never seen an infliction of unconscious 
justice more sudden, or more condign. Austria was 
the first attacked. In 1805, her armies, which had 
so long and so gallantly fought the Republicans, 
were suddenly swept before the French Emperor, 



NAPOLEON. 349 

like the harvest before the scythe ; in three months, 
she laid down her arms in Vienna! — In 1806, Prus- 
sia, the land of soldiership, the camp of the Great 
Frederick, which had baffled France, Austria, and 
Russia for fifty years, was crushed in a day ! — In 
1807, the Russian Emperor was hunted into his own 
territories, and after the desperate battles of Eylau 
and Friedland, was forced to sign the treaty of Tilsit, 
a treaty which placed the virtual sceptre of the Con- 
tinent in the hand of the conqueror. Three years 
had prostrated Europe ! 

But, from this moment higher objects were to be 
accomplished. As the war of the Revolution was 
the mightiest struggle of the modern world ; invol- 
ving the highest interests, the greatest combinations 
of power, the creation and fall of thrones, it was to 
be made the source of a still more solemn lesson. As 
the clouds of the early collision cleared off, a great 
moral was to be seen emerging. The good and evil 
principles were to become more distinct, until they 
engrossed the field. The minor contests died away, 
and the fate of nations was suspended on the issue of 
the contest between France and England — between 
France, seeking all things by force, and contemptuous 
of all religion : and England, the protectress of 
human right, the assertor of universal justice, and the 
worshipper of the purest faith 'of Christianity. 

If man can be taught a belief in Providence, by 
the strongest proof that events can give ; he must be 



o5() NAPOLEON. 

taught by the events of this great war. During a 
quarter of a century of battle, with continual changes 
of continental fortune, England never suffered any 
one great casualty ; was never defeated in a pitched 
battle ; never lost a fleet, a colony, a foot of territory. 
From the period when the war became naval, with all 
the world against her, she fought a succession of the 
most glorious victories ; and when, after having closed 
up the ocean against Napoleon, she was summoned, 
in her habitual patronage of human rights, to protect 
the rising independence of Spain ; she commenced a 
career of soldiership, unshaken by a single defeat ; a 
constancy of success to which Europe has no parallel ; 
a great triumphal era of seven years — a march marked 
only by trophies, from the shores of Portugal to the 
plains of the Netherlands, and finishing in the two- 
fold capture of the enemy's capital, the extinction of 
their empire, and the captivity of the Emperor him- 
self, until his mortal career was closed. Thus lived, 
and thus died Napoleon. 

Never was there in human annals a more striking 
lesson of the sleepless justice of heaven. Rising to 
a sudden and unrivalled eminence, which more re- 
minds us of the work of some magnificent imagination 
than of the realities of the world ; ascending from the 
tumults and darkness of the democracy, like Milton's 
master-fiend ; and not unlike him in his intellect, his 
universal power, and his fierce hostility to the peace 
of man ; we see Napoleon, like the tempter, suddenly 



NAPOLEON. SSI 

doomed to feel a still more powerful hand — to be 
stricken in the moment of his proudest elevation — 
to find himself the denizen of darkness and the 

dungeon — 

" His fulgent head, 
And shape, star-bright, appeared ; 

He stood, expecting 
Their universal shout and high applause 
To fill his ear ; when, contrary, he hears 
On all sides, from innumerable tongues, 
A dismal universal hiss, the sound 
Of public scorn. 1 ' Milton. 

While he involved all his daring and brilliant confe- 
derates in his fall; he felt that the ruin was but 
retribution. Napoleon was the only European sove- 
reign on record whose personal overthrow brought 
down the whole fabric of his empire— all whose 
princedoms perished with himself — the only emperor 
who died in fetters. 

Those things are said, not in a spirit of vain glory, 
but in deep humility and solemn reverence. The 
triumphs of England belong to higher causes than the 
sword of man. We look, for the lustre which shone 
round her helmet in hours when all else in Europe 
was dark, to a nobler region than is trodden by the 
loftiest step of human ambition. But we are not 
thus taught merely to exult in the past ; we learn to 
hope for the future. Having discovered the true 
fount of all victory, we have but to keep the way 
open to the spring, — to make war only in the spirit 
of justice, and peace only in the spirit of sincerity. 



352 NAPOLEON. 

France is still indignant ; her military pride writhes 
at the memory of Waterloo. And yet, of all nations, 
France has the amplest reason to rejoice in the 
sword which swept Napoleon from the throne. His 
nature was selfishness ; sometimes dark and malig- 
nant, sometimes superb and regal ; sometimes the 
slime and fang of the serpent, sometimes the bril- 
liancy and bound — but the serpent still. And like 
the serpent, his longer and closer connexion with 
France would have only involved and crushed her the 
more in the folds of a policy at once the most wily 
and the most inextricable. His wars had already 
cost her two millions of lives ; his trophies had been 
gained, only to embitter defeat by their resumption ; 
his victories had only pampered the national pride, 
until they brought the Cossacks from their deserts to 
parade the streets of Paris. In all his triumphs 
over thrones, he did nothing for the people. Aggran- 
dizing his family at the expense of Europe, he de- 
graded France by a continued vassalage. If he gave 
her provinces, he gave them exhausted by military 
plunder ; and exhausted her revenue, to supply the 
waste of their usurpation. If he conquered, every new 
conquest added a link to the chain which fettered her 
limbs. If Napoleon had remained in the Tuilleries 
to this hour, France would have remained a slave ; 
her land but a larger bastille; her people but a 
conscription governed by gendarmes ; her laws a 
theory; and her sovereign a tyrant scoffing at the 



NAPOLEON. 353 

name of freedom, and ruling by the scourge and the 
sword. 

France is a powerful, and ought to be a great 
country. But Faction is her tempter ; and such it has 
been from time immemorial. She had mobs, and 
mob leaders, when her tribes had nothing to slay each 
other for, but acorns ; and nothing to carry from the 
field of battle, but scalps. Caesar, their conqueror, 
said, two thousand years ago, ' The Gauls have a dis- 
sension in every village.' The folly of her " three glo- 
rious days of 1830,' was the folly of the iEdui and 
Sequani, of the agueish dwellers in the swamp, and 
the shivering savages of the naked hill. Europe de- 
sires to see France intelligent and happy. For thus 
alone can she fulfil her duties to general civilization. 
But Europe will not suffer her to be a mother of ban- 
ditti — the Bedouins of the West, ready to spring out 
upon the peaceful traffic, and block up the common 
highway, of nations. She desires to see the throne 
of France fixed on a solid foundation ; even if that be 
of the most dazzling materials, — marble, gold, or 
adamant, — she will neither covet nor care ; she de- 
mands only that it shall be firm. But she will not 
suffer a throne to increase its height ; which in a 
moment may topple over, and crush its neighbours. 
She will not suffer a great government to stand upon 
a magazine of gunpowder, open for the touch of the 
first ruffian to scatter the blazing fragments round 
the world. 

2 A 



354 NAPOLEON. 

Louis Philippe has shown himself a great sovereign. 
By his talents and by his firmness he has already 
converted the jealousy of the ancient thrones into the 
acknowledgment, that he was born for a throne. By 
calming the rashness of his people, he has saved Eu- 
rope from war, and France from extinction. But 
the day of danger is not past. Jacobinism, like the 
curse of the thorn and thistle — self-sown and self-cul- 
tured, remains, to entangle the step, and exercise the 
continual labour of Kings. 

There are living men in France who stood round 
the scaffold of Louis XVI. ; epicures in revolt, who 
have not forgotten the luxurious days of Republican 
supremacy ; if the bolder rebels have been sent head- 
less to their ' place,' there are those, who, like the 
Demons, that they might not be precipitated into 
judgment, have been content to hide among the 
swine. To the old actors in the great overthrow of 
1793, the shout of the mob will always be a summons 
to try their chance again. That the men of sense and 
principle in France — that the noble families — that the 
sons of those whose melancholy history was written 
on the streaming steps of the guillotine, must depre- 
cate the return of Democracy, may be well believed. 
Yet, it is now fifty years since the day of regicide. A 
new generation has been born. In France nature is 
always inverted ; the fools decide for the rational, the 
young are the councillors of the old, the child is the 
master of the man — wise without experience, intelli- 



NAPOLEON. 355 

gent without thought, and learned without knowledge, 
La jeune France is always infallible. If a royal road 
to learning was laughed at by the ancient sage ; the 
republican road to freedom would have satisfied him 
that the absurdities of human presumption are inex- 
haustible. He would have seen a high-crowned hat 
and black cravat instantly comprehending the whole 
sublime of patriotism ; the ragged rabble of a profli- 
gate capital turned into legislators by a flourish of 
the pike ; and the little tools of little factions carried 
to the summit of public council, with all their states- 
manship acquired in penning epigrams, and all their 
public services comprised in declaiming them. 

But, unless France is incapable of being taught, 
the double burial of Napoleon may bring before her 
eyes a lesson against the desire of conquest, well 
worth all the pageant. If she will pervert his tomb 
into an altar of revolution, or light the torches of 
European war at his funeral pile, she must only 
bring upon the nation the vengeance which extin- 
guished the man. But we should wish to regard 
this striking and stately ceremonial as a pledge of 
general conciliation ; a public acknowledgment that 
war is a frenzy ; a calm and solemn committal of the 
principle of conquest to the grave, with the reliques 
of the conqueror. There let them sleep, and Earth 
begin a new career. A quarter of a century has 
been interposed ; his generation has vanished ; we 
are already posterity ; and, passing the true sentence 



356 NAPOLEON. 

on his errors and his ambition, we can do justice to 
the loftiness of his genius, the grandeur of his concep- 
tions, and even the fearful majesty of that march which 
left such burning tracks on the soil of Europe. We 
can now look upon his career, as we do on the thun- 
der-storm, when it has descended to the horizon ; 
when its roar is still, when the sun shines again, and 
we gaze in delight and wonder at the gigantic shapes 
and dazzling colours of its clouds, as they roll off the 
face of heaven. 



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